


Cernunnos

by wibblyR



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (accidental and purposeful), Agender!Cas, All angels are deer-fauns, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Body Horror, M/M, Misgendering, Suicide, dont be scared it has a happy end somewhat, it's Major Character DeathS actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 13:55:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2231553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wibblyR/pseuds/wibblyR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They still tell tales of the deer, the hunters, and the Tree King. They sing the legend at festivals, they whisper the myth at bedsides. And though it has grown old in the minds of men, inaccuracies like a veil over the truth, the wise and the ignorant will agree in saying that it is, at its heart, a story of love, sacrifice, and wonder."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PART ONE

**Author's Note:**

> One year and a half ago, I wrote [this](http://wibblyrose.tumblr.com/post/47808685638)  
> Now, it has somehow evolved and mutated into this much more developed deerstiel AU, which still baffles me tbh.  
> This all started because of [Tania](http://octopifer.tumblr.com), my eternal muse, who continued to give me inspiration and encouragement throughout the whole writing process, so i would like to thank her very very much. I could not have done it without you. She also drew the two beautiful artworks in the pdf ! (pls read the pdf)  
> Thanks also to my awesome editor beta, [Elizabeth](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lacedwithlilacs/pseuds/lacedwithlilacs), and to [Askance](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance), who very kindly accepted to read this and give her much welcome opinion and advice. 
> 
> PDF available [here](https://www.mediafire.com/?b5lh885tuxdxdu5)  
> Playlist available [here](http://8tracks.com/wibblyrose/crowns-of-flowers-and-blood)  
> Inspiration tag on my blog available [here](http://wibblyrose.tumblr.com/tagged/crowns-of-flowers-and-blood)

“Dean, I think this fountain has magical properties.”

Dean, who was already a few feet ahead of Sam, turned and started to make a shushing gesture. But Sam was crouching in front of a fountain which sprang from an unnatural-looking hole in the wall of the cliff that towered them, and even though the stream was steady and continuous, the clear pond it filled didn’t overflow. Dean stopped.

“What ?”

Dean approached Sam, who was pointing at something in the water, fingers hovering over the surface like he didn’t want to touch it. Dean crouched. The bottom of the fountain was littered with skeletons of rodents and little animals. Dean frowned. Sam got up to tear a green leaf off a bush and came back. He let the leaf fall and, as soon as it touched the water, it shriveled and lost its color. The leaf that landed on the polished little bones at the bottom of the fountain was as dead as if Sam had picked it in autumn.

“So what ? It kills everything ?”, Dean ventured. “You think it could kill werewolves ?”

Of all the monsters that Dean and Sam hunted, werewolves were the only ones, for the time being, that were immune to the bite of their weapons. Sam looked taken aback, then narrowed his eyes. He didn’t answer. Instead, he took the dagger at his calf and dunked the blade in the water. He then went to the bush he had previously taken a leaf off, and cut a wisp of it. The entirety of it withered and blackened, dying in less than five seconds.

“I dunno”, he finally said. “Let’s just fill our flasks with it and take the info back to father.”

Their father was John Winchester, the Hunter King. Indeed, Sam and Dean Winchester were the princes of the kingdom, part of a royal family that didn’t delegate to its hunters troops. More than for the protection of the folk, they hunted for revenge. The King had earned his nickname by tracking down the human-bear hybrid that killed his wife, Mary, and later, Sam’s childhood love, Jessica.

Sam already knew that silver was what killed werewolves, but didn’t tell Dean. The deadly fountain was still useful. They had learned to spot magical things and use them to their advantage, since so many monsters and other ominous creatures that infested the kingdom were born of magic.

Sam’s silence weighed heavily on his mind, since werewolves had been evading them for a while now, and their father didn’t tolerate when a new monster was discovered and had not its head promptly hung in his trophy room. Sam and Dean usually always abode by John’s orders; he had started to take them with him and taught them how to hunt at their youngest age. Sam was the younger one, all soft eyes and brown locks, an efficient hunter who gathered information in the castle’s library before tracking down any monster. He didn’t like hunting very much, because contrary to animals, monsters were often intelligent enough to speak and had most of the time a human likeness to their mind. But he still hunted for the sake of Jessica, and all the victims of the bear monster. Its yellow eyes haunted the family – mostly because its head was now mounted on the wall above the throne, as a reminder of what they fought for.

Sam’s older brother, Dean, with his grassy green eyes and sun-kissed skin, followed his father on every hunt of his, and even went on his own sometimes, or with Sam. He, unlike Sam, was old enough when their mother died to remember and miss her.

It happened on one of Dean’s lonely hunts. He wanted some time for himself because the next day, it was his birthday, and he was going to be an adult. For the occasion, all the hunters of the country were going to be gathered and he would be leading them for the first time. Dean came here, in the forest of Chitaqua, to have a look at the field so he would be a step ahead of the men and his father would be proud. Dean looked around him. He had stopped to eat a stick of dried meat in a clearing which was half-eaten by a body of water that was too big to be a pond and too small to be a lake. The thin ice on the surface was glittering and the grass was frosted over, of an icy-pale green. It was winter and there was a light chilly wind but the sky was a clear blue and the sun was still warm on Dean’s skin. He sighed and tilted his head back and bumped it against the tree trunk he was leaning his back on. Bodies of water always reminded him that he didn’t know how to swim. Sam was more skilled than he was. On his coming-of-age birthday hunt, four years from now, he would probably be a lot more impressive than Dean was going to be tomorrow. Dean had never quite forgiven himself for having been absent the day Sam and his dad took the yellow-eyed bear down, perceiving it as a personal failure he had to make up for, even if it was not his fault. He had been sick for days, stuck in bed, fever making him delirious and causing him so much pain he’d wished his mother was there to soothe him.

Bushes rustled and Dean stilled. A hybrid had come into the clearing – without noticing Dean, it seemed. He went to crouch by the pond and, after piercing the ice film with sharp claws, drank the water in cupped hands. Not he, it, Dean corrected himself. Human-like behavior was always confusing. Well, its lower half was not so human, for its legs were deer-like, covered in warm brown fur and where there should have been feet, they only bent and continued to end in hooves. But its upper half was that of a human male, except for deer ears covered in smooth-looking fuzz, and antlers sprouting on top of its head and curling above it like parentheses to its thoughts. There was a trail of hair down its spine, leading to a fluffy tail dotted with white. The angles of its body - particularly its hips, its cheekbones, its shoulders, its elbows -, were covered in speckled fur in different tones of brown, and its hands and upper arms were gloved in brown fuzz also. From where he was, Dean couldn’t see his – its – face, only the wild dark halo of its hair. The deer-creature sat on the edge of the pond, letting its calves and hooves go through the ice and dangle in the water. Dean shivered at the sight of its bare skin and tightened his furs around him. The creature threw its head back, basking it in the crisp sunlight, resting its weight on its hands, softly digging in the ground behind him. It.

It couldn’t have been more vulnerable; Dean took this as his cue. The pliant soles of his knee-high hunting boots helped him make no sound on the brittle grass – his father had trained him to walk silently on all grounds anyway - as he slunk back under the cover of the trees to walk the few steps it took to place him right behind the creature. He began making his way towards its back with stealthy tread and bated breath, eyes unblinking, his hand hovering over the handle of the blade strapped to his back. In the blink of an eye, he took the last silent leap and landed crouching and pressed to the hybrid’s back, the steely edge of his weapon against its throat. It was right at this moment that Dean realized the hybrid had been still for quite some time. Over its shoulder, he could see their blurred reflection, and the mirrored hybrid’s eyes – a chilling blue – were looking straight into Dean, like he– it wanted to drill some sort of disapproval into his skull, like Dean was a child and it itself wasn’t on the brink of being killed.

“Aren’t you going to beg for mercy ?” Dean felt obligated to ask.

“Aren’t you going to kill me ?” It had a surprisingly deep voice. It made him think of earth: rich, ancient, and like its words were deeply rooted in it.

“Why shouldn’t I ? You’re a monster”, Dean spat as a reply, even though an uneasiness was starting to settle in his stomach. He just had to press the blade...

“What makes me a monster in your eyes ?” It sounded genuinely surprised and turned its face towards Dean’s as if it didn’t risk getting its throat sliced in the process.

“Look at you”, Dean said, and to feel like he physically had the upper-hand again, he pushed the creature to the ground and whipped around to sit on its lower stomach, putting a hand to its shoulder to keep it down. He bent over to put the sharp threat against its throat again and to whisper venomously:

“You look like someone couldn’t decide if you were a deer or a man and settled on throwing you in the trash can half-finished. And somehow you still made it here. You’re not natural. Freaks like you kill people because they can’t stand the fact that we’re normal and they’re not.”

At these words, anger finally burrowed the lines of the hybrid’s face.

“I’m more natural than you’ll ever be”, he – it growled, breath hot and heavy on Dean’s face, who, trapped in the hard gaze of the creature, didn’t seem to be able to move. “I’m older than you’ll ever get to be. I’m wiser. Stronger. I could have killed you a thousand times since I arrived in this clearing but I didn’t because I understand that when something is there, it’s supposed to be there, and when something is how it is, it’s how it’s supposed to be.”

Dean inhaled sharply but didn’t make a sound when ten clawed fingers dug into his thighs.

“You should show me some respect”, the creature finished with an intensity that carved the words into Dean’s ears.

They were both breathing heavily now, chests almost touching, and Dean knew he was way too close but he felt like moving away would have been a sign of defeat.

“I’ll kill you”, he said stubbornly.

“Do it, then. What are you waiting for ? Do it.” The creature grabbed his wrist, made him press the blade a little harder, cutting a shallow red cut in its own throat.

The sight of the blood made Dean snap back, sitting up, and sheath his blade.

“No”, he breathed out reluctantly.

“Why ?”

Dean stayed silent for a moment but gave in.

“Because it would feel like killing somebody”, he muttered, and now he did feel like a child.

A smile that could be qualified as triumphant bloomed on the creature’s face, smug and condescending crinkles around his strikingly blue and human eyes. Failure sat bitterly on Dean’s tongue. The creature propped himself up on his elbows and asked, “Why didn’t it feel like that before, hunter ?”

Dean’s gear felt tight and uncomfortable, and he shifted uneasily under the piercing stare. “Because I didn’t let them talk. Because they didn’t feel as...”

“Human.”

“Yeah.”

“I see.”

And Dean wished he could have said the same, because he had hunted very human-like monsters before, and he didn’t understand why this creature was any different.

“It’s not that it’s not nice having you on me like that” – the creature smiled again, a playful stretch of his chapped lips, never showing teeth – “but could you get off me, since we’ve settled you’re not killing me ?”

Embarrassment crept up Dean’s neck and cheeks and he got up, stuttering apologetic nonsense, and the creature after him.

“Wait”, Dean said just as the creature turned to leave after having eyed him from head to toe a last time. “I’m leading a hunt here tomorrow. You should – I don’t know, hide, or something.”

The creature tilted his head for a bit, like he was confused as to why he had said that, then Dean saw a teasing grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“As if you could catch me”, he finally said, and he turned and disappeared promptly amongst the shrubbery.

Dean leaned against a tree for a while, trying to make sense of what had just happened. For a reason unknown to him, his skin tingled.

 

The following day, the hunt went smoothly; Dean worked twice as hard as he had planned, and he hadn’t even thought it possible. Thanks to his spotting, they found a lot of prey, even if they didn’t catch it all. Dean quieted his troubled mind by killing as much as he could, filling the answers to unwanted questions with blood. Pride swelled in his heart that evening, when his father congratulated him and solemnly acknowledged him as a man and welcomed him into the adult life.  
Dean hadn’t so much as caught a glance of the deer hybrid.

 

A week later, Dean returned to the forest. It had snowed, and, wrapped in his black and white furs, he blended in with the gnarled naked trees and the layers of snow covering everything; his footsteps crunched on the sparkling white blanket and his breath puffed out his mouth like smoke. He ended up in the clearing and there he settled to wait. For several hours, nothing happened but a few bare-twigged shrubs rustling, and Dean killed time as best as he could; he made snowballs and threw them against trees, tested the iced surface of the pond with his gloved fingers and the toe of his boot, ate the pie he had stolen in the castle’s kitchens and carefully packed to keep it warm. Until, finally, he heard a gravelly voice behind him.

“You came back.”

Dean turned and shivered once again at the sight of the creature’s naked skin in the frost-bitten air, though he could see now that it had a distinct red tint, and Dean pondered lending him his coat, but the deer didn’t otherwise seem bothered by the cold. He wondered for a moment if the creature was going to ask him why he had come back – and he hoped not, for he didn’t really know the answer himself – but after a silence the deer said, “I saw you. Hunting.” And Dean knew he was not making up the condemning tone in the otherwise flat statement.

“Yeah, well”, he replied awkwardly, “I’m glad we didn’t see you.”

The creature squinted, and seemed to decide something as he slightly nodded to himself. He stretched his hand out to Dean, who cast on it a bewildered look.

“Come with me. I’ll show you something.”

Dean blinked a few times, a voice that sounded like his father’s in the back of his head nagging him about gaining trust and discovering hideouts. Dean mentally shut it away and followed the creature, who hadn’t waited for his response and had started disappearing under the copse of trees.

Dean noticed how the creature paid attention not to step on the frozen mossy exposed roots on the ground, how he let his fingers linger on the trees he passed, gently crumbling the lichen, how his muscles rolled under his skin and how the forest seemed to curl around him, whereas Dean’s face kept getting stung by the sharp cold and he tripped again and again, like he had never had any hunter training.

The space between the trees began to grow and Dean thought they were entering another clearing but instead his steps faltered and came to a stop despite himself. The deer was still walking forward, unaware that Dean’s breath had been taken away. Finally he cast a glance behind him and stopped as he saw the dumbstruck expression on Dean’s face. Dean stood there still, gaping at the oldest, most majestic tree he’d ever seen. He craned his neck, his eyes trying to take it all in, but it was too big. Its emerald foliage, on the twisted branches extending to every sides, was untouched by winter, and undulated in an inexistent breeze, tall in the sky, way above the other trees, and how had no one ever seen it ? What kind of tree was it ? Its trunk was larger than the hall of the Winchester castle and its roots larger than Dean; and Dean felt so very, very small. When his gaze came back down, he found the creature watching him intently from the seat he’d taken on one of the roots, head resting on the trunk, antlers rattling lightly on the bark. With a gesture of his hand he beckoned Dean closer. Dean approached, removing his gloves and letting his hand follow the root as he walked along it to where the hybrid was seated. He wanted to take the rest of his clothes off; it was spring here, the white sunlight of the uniformly grey sky becoming golden when it passed through the leaves and landing in dappling patches of yellow light on the green grass, clumps of flowers here and there under Dean’s boots.

“What is this ?” he asked with a knot in his throat.

The deer closed his eyes.

“The Tree King”, he whispered with something like reverence in his voice.

Dean chuckled. “King ? Like, is there a tree hierarchy ?” he joked.

“Yes.” Dean’s laugh dropped under the deer’s serious gaze and matter-of-fact tone.

“Really ?” Dean climbed the root and sat across from the deer with his legs dangling on each side. He felt giddy. “How does it work ?”

He couldn’t help but think of Sam. Oh, how he would have loved this.

“Tall trees are considered protectors of smaller trees.” The deer’s sharp-nailed fingers gritted lightly on the bark, and Dean thought if they had been on the ground he’d have been picking the grass. The gesture made the creature somewhat endearing to him. “The more robust ones even more so, they take all the abuse of the weather, like storms. You could say they’re self-sacrificing. The saplings generally grow around bigger trees like children around their mother. And there are a few soldier trees who release sap to attract termites and keep them away from the weaker trees. Basically, you have more power when you’re bigger, but you have to use it to help the feebler.”

“So… are trees alive ?”

And the deer must have seen the horror dawning on Dean’s face because he quickly answered, “Not- not really, no. They don’t feel pain. You’re not exactly killing them when you cut them down. But you should remember that trees are important, not only for other trees, but for all living creatures.”

The condemning tone was becoming familiar. “You… feel strongly about trees.” But Dean guessed it wasn’t that weird, since he was part animal.

“I was born from the Tree King”, the deer replied casually, and Dean sat there processing the sentence in silence for a few minutes before it went through.

He opened his mouth and closed it again, at a loss for words, trying to understand the logistics of it, until he settled on saying with a hesitant grin, “Well, you did say you were more natural than me.”

The deer took a moment before smiling back, genuine, without any trace of the teasing and mocking of their first encounter, and Dean stared at his few crooked teeth and the crinkles on the bridge of his nose and the corner of his eyes. It was while he was looking at the deer’s face that he realized how orange the light they were basking in had gotten. He looked around him to see the cold and dark winter evening setting on the rest of the forest, shadows falling longer, silence deepening, and immediately hopped to the ground. He was late, and it was quite a long way home.

“I apologize, but I must go.” The words felt almost too formal on his tongue. He’d only ever been this respectful to his father. “I’m Dean Winchester, by the way. The king’s son.”

“I figured. I heard how your men called you when you hunted.”

Dean felt incredibly stupid. He held his hand out to the deer to help him down, but after he hit the ground, their clasped hands lingered. With his deer legs, he was slightly taller than Dean.

“So…What’s your name ?” Dean asked, trying to sound casual.

The deer shifted his thumb to the inside of Dean’s wrist. A tightness settled in Dean’s chest, stuffed his throat.

“I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.” The sincerity in the grave voice made Dean tentatively brush his fingertips to the creature’s pulse too. The heartbeat was faint but steady. “Dean.”

Dean promptly removed his hand from the grasp and put his gloves back on as he bade goodbye to the deer. He cast a last longing glance to the Tree King and left, shaking, and during all the way home, Impala fretted as if she could sense how troubled her owner was.

 

For the following two years, Dean stayed away from Chitaqua. He dreamed of it, of the Tree King, of the deer-man, branches and antlers mingling together in a blur, but he kept those memories locked away for when he slept, and did his best to forget it all once morning had come.

 

However, one day, John called Sam and Dean to him. He said : “A man has informed me that a creature is murdering villagers. He only said it resembled a deer, for it lures its preys with its apparent innocence, and he begged me to save his terrified town. Reports have indicated it may have come from the Chitaqua forest. You will head east and bring its head back to me.” His words had the tranquil fury of a death sentence, but it was nowhere near the rage they sparked in Dean, setting his mind on fire with a rush of memories that were never really forgotten and making his blood boil with anger at himself.

 

The next day, Sam and Dean rode fast to Chitaqua, their packs full of sharp weapons to cut off the monster’s head. When they arrived they split and decided to meet again at dusk.

Dean walked rapidly but with stealth, his hunting gear helping him make no sound. He laid careful eyes on his surroundings, ready to act at the slightest movement he perceived, though he couldn’t keep a feeling of wonder from going through him as it was the first time he saw the Chitaqua forest without its winter coat. The air smelled warm and rich of growing things, filled with birdsongs. The trees had blossomed, branches heavy with clumps of white, pink, mauve flowers that the light wind carried away and littered on the soft ground beneath Dean’s feet. The flowery and leafy canopy let only shafts of softly colored sunlight pass through, making the dust motes and lone petals that drafted through the thin golden pillars glitter brightly. The tortuous branches arched upwards and hung downwards, wrapping Dean in wooden corridors. Roots were still slithering on the ground and Dean grabbed onto low-hanging branches to keep his balance.

Dean found their clearing- the clearing again. He took a quick look at the tall grass and wildflowers growing everywhere, petals floating on the rippled surface of the pond, before climbing up an elm tree and waiting, not moving a muscle after having unsheathed a dagger – he cursed himself for letting Sam take the bow. Blessedly, the deer came out into the clearing not long afterwards, across from Dean, going straight to the pond to drink. Dean wasted no time; crouched and jumped as far as he could, but just at this moment the creature looked up straight at him, straightening his back. Dean managed to land at a perfect angle on him, hitting him square in the chest. The deer made a wheezing sound. Dean brandished his blade to strike the fatal blow but the deer was quicker; grabbed Dean’s wrists in a strong grip and maintained them on the ground on either side of his own head, pulling their faces close. Dean can almost count the long chestnut-colored eyelashes under the furious frown. The hybrid started to breathe again, carefully, by short, angry intakes, and Dean let out a groan despite himself as the dark pointed fingernails of the creature dug in his skin – blood welled up and slid down in the spongy ground. Dean didn’t – couldn’t - move, sitting as he was on the deer’s stomach, his knees pinning the tan shoulders. The deer bared his teeth in a parody of a smile as he snarled, “You know I can throw you off, right ?”

“Well then, why don’t you ?” Dean snapped back.

“As I’ve said once, I don’t dislike having you on me like that.”

The harsh edge to the taunt made it sound reproachful.

“Cut the sweet-talking, it won’t work this time !”

“Oh, because it used to work ?” The deer asked with mock-surprise, and it didn’t suit him.

“I’m going to kill you. I really am.” Dean’s voice had dropped to a hiss, his mouth twisting terribly.

“That’s what you said the first time too, and yet here I am.”

Dean stayed silent for a moment, lips trembling with anger. He was almost numbed to the pain in his wrists, even though it felt as if they were about to be broken. The deer dropped his act and his ever-questioning eyes searched Dean’s.

“What’s going on, Dean ? You haven’t come here for years. What happened ? What changed ?”

Dean laughed mirthlessly.

“Are you kidding me ?” His tone went high with disbelief. “You killed people, you monster !”

The five words were like the fingers of a slap to the hybrid’s face.

“What ?” he said flatly. “No I haven’t. I’ve never killed people.”

“Tell that to the villager who went to see my father because you decimated his town.”

“Dean, I haven’t left this forest for years”, the deer said, his voice posed as if he was trying his hardest to keep panic out of it.

Dean started to calm down too, breathing slowly through his nose, his mouth a thin line.

“Why should I believe you ?”

“You know me. _I_ ’m not a killer.” The emphasis felt accusatory. “Do you know this villager in the slightest ?” As he said this, an idea seemed to dawn on him. “What does he look like ?”

“Who ?”

“The villager ! Did he have a hat, or a cap ?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see him, my father did !” Dean answered, on the defensive.

The deer huffed exasperatedly.

“It was probably Alastair...”

“...What ?” Dean asked, completely lost.

The deer sighed.

“Alastair is a demon who has a grudge against my kind. It is probable he destroyed that village himself and gave a description of a deer creature to target us.” Then, as an aside, “Jokes on him, I’m the only one left in this country.”

Dean had too many questions swirling in his head. “Uh, care to explain the backstory ?”

The deer took a deep breath. The hold on Dean’s wrists had loosened but he didn’t do anything but listen.

“There are other creatures like me. I used to live with them – as a pack, if you will – long ago. There was another group of creatures, called demons, more human-like than us, with twisted horns and patches of blackened, scaled, flaking skin. A leader appeared out of nowhere and rose among them, a faun named Lucifer but who we nicknamed the Devil. He wanted to kill every other species, but we couldn’t kill him. So we trapped him and drowned him in a lake that was a gateway to Hell, another realm, a dreadful one to say the least. Demons are not really kind, but at least they don’t want to kill everyone, and without Lucifer, the genocidal fever died down. But some demons stayed loyal to him – very few, fortunately. There was the Trinity : Meg, Ruby, and Lilith – but they’re all female. Azazel could never pass as human – he isn’t even a demon. That leaves us with Alastair. If I remember well, his horns are small enough that he could hide them, and if he wore clothes, nobody could see his skin. He’s not that loyal to Lucifer I think, he just really likes slaughter, but to come back like that, centuries after the events...”

“Centuries ?!” Dean interrupted him, a bit high-pitched. The deer stared at him.

Dean’s hands were completely free now, and he sat up, his spine cracking.

“What happened to the others ?” he said quietly.

“I suppose they’re still alive. I hope so. I left and came back here, where we come from. I needed to be alone.”

“For how long ?”

The deer didn’t answer. Dean closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He now had to decide if he wanted to believe that the deer had made all of this up to save himself or if he had opened up to prove his innocence. Just before he opened his eyes, he felt a hand grabbing the front of his shirt. His eyes snapped open and the air went out of his lungs as his back hit the ground. The deer had swapped their position.

“Dean”, he said softly.

Dean waited, not daring to move or breathe or look away from the intensely blue eyes.

“My name is Castiel. I am a deer-person, born from the Tree King four hundred and thirty eight years ago. I have never killed anyone in all those years. And I waited for you to come back for more than two years.”

Dean felt that familiar tingling under his skin again and his face and neck felt hot. He’d decided what he wants to believe.

“Okay”, he said, voice barely a whisper. “Okay”, he repeated. He gulped. “Can I get up ?”

Castiel stood up. Dean followed, self-consciously flattening the folds in his gear, tightening the straps and belts that held his weapons and equipment. Castiel was still staring at him wearily, likely gauging if Dean still wanted to kill him. Dean put his hands up.

“I won’t let you be killed”, he assured. He glanced at the purpling sky and the streaks of orange and pink on the sparse clouds. “I must get going. My brother’s waiting for me.”

Castiel awkwardly stretched a hand out for Dean to shake. Dean did and, like their previous encounter, they held on for a bit longer than necessary.

“I’ll come back”, Dean blurted out.

Castiel smiled, and Dean took the image with him on the trip home, otherwise keeping up a disappointed expression for Sam, lamenting with him that they haven’t found anything. He preferred to dwell on the bright memory of Castiel to put off having to feel guilty – that would come soon enough, when they would have to report to John.

 

When they came back, John’s rage was worse than Dean had expected. He couldn’t help flinching when the king yelled at them that while they were away another town had been attacked. Dean felt like his stomach was sinking, because he knew who was doing this, but didn’t know how to bring it up – and, at the same time, he was relieved it really wasn’t Castiel. It was Sam who apologized. John dismissed it, glaring at them for a long time before doing something a younger Dean would have termed blasphemous. For the first time in years, his dad touched the yellow-eyed bear’s head, and it was to move it to the trophy room to make its place above the throne vacant. “You’ll go back until this monster is killed and I can look at its vile but dead head every time I enter this room. You are my sons. You do not fail hunting. You are the princes. You do not let your people die.”

 

That evening Dean dwelled in the cold, stone-walled corridors of the first floor, pacing, and it was when he nervously looked up around him for the hundredth time that he saw Sam coming towards him. On an impulse, Dean decided to take action.

“Let’s go back, Sam.”

“Well, let me do some more research before, I haven’t been thorough before. The library should-”

“Now.”

Sam watched Dean, brow furrowed, gauging how resolved he looked, and Dean hoped he looked like he knew what to do. It seemed so. Sam turned his head and his profile was outlined by the milky glow of the full moon through the glass panels of the window.

“Okay then, let’s... Let’s get going.” Sam awkwardly gestured with his hand.

With his little brother backing him up, Dean felt in control again. He steadied himself.

“Come, we have lots of things to pack...”

 

A couple of hours later, after having warned a few servants of their departure, they were riding hard through the moonlit night. They arrived at the edge of the forest just as the sky’s darkness began to fade, as if the moon was bleeding its pallor into it. They installed their camp just beyond the border of trees, not far away from the main road, and started a fire so they could rest a little while letting the flames shake their bones of the night’s clinging chill. Sam actually fell asleep after some time, limbs sprawled on the ground, exhaustion making him oblivious to the discomfort. Dean got up as soon as his brother’s respiration deepened and slowed down. He walked briskly, almost running, among the trees whose bark was still damp with morning dew, careless for the noise his feet made breaking twigs on the ground. Once in the clearing, when he sat against a tree trunk, the fatigue didn’t waste any time taking its toll on him and he dozed off almost immediately.

He didn’t know how much time passed, but when he was woken up by a familiar “Dean”, the sun was high and bright enough to black out his sight for a moment. Castiel was standing there before him, bathed in sunlight, keen eyes squinting. If Dean had been at eye-level with him, he probably wouldn’t have noticed it right away, but as it was, he looked up to him and saw something sitting on top of Castiel’s head.

“What’s that ?” he asked, pointing at it.

Castiel raised his hand and brushed the flowers, as if he had forgotten they were there.

“That ? A flower crown.”

“I want one.”

“I’ll make it for you”

Dean thought of telling him he was joking, but realized he didn’t mind. He got up to leave the shade and sit idly in the sunlight, near the pond, palms pressing the ground and head thrown back. Castiel followed him and sat across from him, eyes cast downwards, almost... almost shyly, Dean wondered. He bent forwards suddenly, slowing the movement when Castiel flinched, to graze the petals with his fingertips.

“What are they ?”

“Dogwood, elder, and heath”, Castiel answered promptly.

Dean stared more intently at the pink, white, and yellow flowers woven tightly together around the antlers, twining up them.

“Do they have a meaning ?”

“Yes.”

Dean didn’t push further. He let himself sink to his elbows and watched Castiel fiddle with the grass. The way he hung his head made Dean think his antlers actually weighed more than he had thought – and he wondered, for a moment, if they had not grown since he had last seen him.

“Aren’t those inconvenient ? Sometimes ?” he said, pointing at them with his chin.

Castiel looked up, surprised – well, maybe that was an odd thing to ask, Dean thought. Castiel then got on his hands and knees and crawled until he was kneeling beside him.

“Like this ?” He poked Dean’s forehead with one of his antlers.

“Ow”, Dean responded, even though it hadn’t hurt. He chuckled. He wanted to touch the antlers but restrained himself, fidgeting. He didn’t know why. Castiel narrowed a probing gaze on him, unintentionally, as if he couldn’t help it. Dean derailed his focus elsewhere.

“Why do you have brighter specks on your fur ?” he asked. “Only fawns have those, but you’re quite a bit older than a fawn, if I remember well.”

Castiel looked into the distance, seemingly pondering the question. He eventually looked back at Dean and shrugged. His gaze dropped somewhere below Dean’s face. Dean watched as Castiel put a hand flat against his chest, and his fingers inflicted a slow but relentless pressure. Dean stared at Castiel, a bit bewildered, but let himself be pushed to the ground. He felt more than he saw Castiel unbuckling the belts on his torso and taking off his fingerless gloves. “There”, Castiel said. “Breathe.”

What a strange command, Dean thought. He obeyed. Closing his eyes, he let his chest rise with each intake of breath and dug his fingers in the earth. He turned his head so the grass tickled his cheek and ear, and the green of it shined through his eyelids. A breeze blew gently and crept under his shirt, making him feel strangely lighter. He could smell the vibrant scent of spring, the sun basked his face, and the lush air was ringing in his ears; he felt like stripping naked and he smiled. The tip of a claw touched the bridge of his nose, softly and slightly tickling, and others joined it and traced mysterious patterns under his eyes, on his cheekbones.

Dean laughed low in his throat.

“Cas, are you playing ‘connect the dots’ with my freckles ?” The nickname rolled off his tongue with brazen ease.

“The sun does make them stand out”, Castiel said by way of an answer. “Why do you ask ?”

Dean hummed. “My mom used to that.”

“She doesn’t anymore ?”

Dean swallowed. He couldn’t help it.

“...No”, he ended up answering. “A monster killed her. Giant freaky yellow-eyed bear. Never seen something like it. Probably the last of its kind.”

“Oh”, Castiel said almost offhandedly, “that’s Azazel.”

“What ?” Dean opened his eyes and turned his head sharply. “You serious ?”

Castiel nodded.

“Well, we killed that son of a bitch.”

Dean’s eye caught Castiel’s contented smile at that, at odds with the soft ones he usually delivered, but closer to the mischievous ones he had worn early in their relationship. Dean’s eye also caught the flower threatening to fall off Castiel’s garland. Castiel went completely still as Dean fixed it and lingered, not daring but eventually deciding to stroke delicately one of Castiel’s antlers. He let his hand fall back down at his side.

“It’s kind of... velvet-y”, he observed.

“Hmm”, Castiel said absently while touching dir antlers with a troubled frown.

Dean, not noticing, pretended to grumble petulantly.

“What do you want to do ?” he asked, pouting. “I can’t stay too long, the forest isn’t that big and my brother is going to worry and look for me.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised about the size of this forest”, Castiel murmured, secretive.” Is your brother the tall one with the beautiful hair ?”

“I have beautiful hair,” Dean replied in false offense.

“Yes.” Castiel’s fingers crept to Dean’s forehead and he ran them through his hair, carding through it, sometimes grazing his temples.

Dean let the massage lull him, and he dozed off in the heat’s haze.

 

Dean was awake and chuckling now, but the lines of his face were still blissfully slack and his crinkled eyes still only half-opened. Castiel was leaning right over him, casting a fresh shadow on him, the outline of his silhouette blurred by a holy light, sun raining on his back and dripping from his shoulders like honey, a halo hemming his antlers and crown. He was plucking petals out of forget-me-nots and letting them fall on Dean’s face. Their light touch tickled but Dean appreciated their softness and their sweet scent.

When Cas bent down to kiss Dean’s brow, he would have mistaken the touch for that of a petal if his eyes had been closed. Cas gently swiped the blue petals one by one, replacing each of them with a kiss. The slight scraping of the chapped lips felt like a burn to Dean.

Cas then left and comes back with cranberries. He set to feeding them to Dean, placing each one on the hunter’s mouth and accompanying them between the plush lips so they didn’t drop and hit the back of Dean’s throat. The dangerous edge of Cas’s claws didn’t keep Dean from sucking his careful fingers in farther than necessary. He licked the acidulous juice off his own lips and off Cas’s thumb, and locked gazes with Cas as he did so. They hadn’t been talking but suddenly they couldn’t be more silent.

Cas held a cranberry between his teeth and lowered his face to use his mouth as he had done his fingers. Dean closed his eyes and waited for the brush of Cas’s lips against his own, finally, but instead he was kissed by the berry and the hint of bared teeth. It was not nearly enough for Dean; he raised a hand to Cas’s jaw and grabbed it firmly, forcing him to keep his balance by putting a hand on Dean’s side, and Dean crashed their mouths together, smearing the red fruit between them. His eyes were shut tightly, the sudden explosion of pent-up want kneading in his chest, almost making him cry. He kissed Castiel harder. His thumb swept across Cas’s cheekbone as his hand made its way into Cas’s hair, softness of locks matching softness of fur, his fingers grazing the antlers, the long deer ears, reminding him that he was kissing a monster, but he couldn’t care less. Castiel kissed back with the eagerness of a teenager, his nose squeezed against Dean’s cheek. Dean inhaled sharply when Cas pressed his lips to his, sucked on them, and when he felt the tip of Cas’s tongue, berry-sweet, he unconsciously wriggled, half-thrusting into the air. They broke the kiss, breaths mingling, lips trembling against each other. Before resting his head back on the ground, Dean stole one, two, three quick kisses to Cas’s now shining wet mouth. Even though Cas was half-slumped on him, it felt like a weight had been lifted off Dean’s chest. Castiel seemed unable to take his eyes away from Dean’s, staring at him in wonder. His hand on Dean’s side caressed up and down mechanically, the sharp nails scraping just slightly. Just as Dean, gazing up at Cas’s dumbfounded face with a sense of achievement, thought that they should kiss again, the high colors on Castiel’s face drained at once, like ripples of light on the surface of water would be broken by the throw of a stone.

Dean looked to his right, where Cas was looking, and his lazy eyes flew wide open in shock.

Sam was standing at the edge of the clearing, his bow drawn with an arrow, staring at them, absolutely motionless. The three of them stayed frozen like this for what seemed like forever, until Sam mustered a “Dean ?” in a high-pitched voice laced with incredulity just as Dean cried out, “Please don’t shoot !”

“I won’t, I won’t”, Sam said hurriedly, making a little motion with his arms to show that his bow was pointed to the ground. “But care to explain ?”

Dean got up, a bit dizzy thanks to the sun exposure and the on-and-off nap.

“I was going to tell you, I swear !” That would have been a lot better than Sam discovering them like this. “This is Castiel, he’s...”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt Cas’s hand press his upper arm to stop him.

“I’ll take over from here, Dean”, he murmured, before pushing him gently aside to approach Sam.

Dean gulped, helplessly afraid for Cas, but Sam withdrew his arrow, putting it back in its quiver, and when Cas invited him to sit across from him, he did, putting his bow down on the ground beside him.

Dean stood there as Cas started to explain his story to Sam, the latter listening to him intently. Their legs were almost touching, and Dean felt, with a frown, a mild pang of jealousy. He fidgeted, not quite knowing what to do with himself in the meantime, and left to wander in the forest. He found himself picking flowers, drawn to their colors and fragrance inexplicably. He came back to the clearing with a bouquet of them, only to find Sam and Cas talking even closer than how he had left them, the sharp profile of Sam’s gentle face almost touching Cas’s smooth one, gazing softly into each other’s eyes. Dean set his jaw when he saw Cas’s hand in Sam’s on Cas’s knee. He cleared his throat. This did make them jump, but not away from each other. Their innocent faces made something churn in Dean’s gut, a pull tugging him differently to both of them, and for a vivid moment they seemed to radiate in light. When he gave the bouquet to Cas, Sam gave him a bemused look, and Dean rolled his eyes, blushing. He didn’t notice some flowers in the bouquet had changed once they had entered Cas’s grasp.

Cas helped both him and Sam through making their flower crowns, picking the flowers for them, showing them with deft fingers how to put together sweetbriar, red roses, and black-eyed-susans for Dean, and abutilon, gladiolus, and heliotrope for Sam, on pliant twigs that they shaped into a prickly circle. Once they were done and put the flower crowns on their head, they made fun of each other childishly, until they remembered to thank Cas, humbled. All three of them ended up lying on the ground in silence, their heads in a circle, basking in the sunlight as much as they could until the warm star started to disappear behind the trees. A languid atmosphere enveloped them but surprisingly, Sam and Dean didn’t fall asleep, and it might have had something to do with Castiel holding their hands. They felt as if they were connected to the ground, to each strand of grass that was touching their skin, and they stared at Castiel’s profile for answers but his eyes were closed, the corners of his mouth uplifted in the shadow of a smile.  
Just as they began to doze off, Cas gripped their hands, waking them up, and they sat up with him. The sky was a pale night blue, stars starting to be visible a handful at a time.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t stay the night.”

As Dean sensed Sam was going to ask why, he gave him a look while shaking his head, and Sam shut his mouth, squinting at Dean. Dean had learned not to ask questions when it came to Cas. They left him with the unsaid promise to come back the next day.

 

As they came back to their camp, they teased each other, exchanging their flower crowns, but one of the thorns of a rose on Dean’s crown hadn’t been removed and wounded Sam’s forehead.

“You’re bleeding”, Dean said uselessly, because the blood dripped off Sam’s brow in front of his eye.

They decided to stop playing with them – Dean plucked the thorn off – and to respect them as gifts from Cas.

“De seems so kind”, Sam said as they were lying at night in their tent waiting for sleep to take them.

“What ?” Dean asked.

“Castiel.”

“Why are you calling him...”

“De’s neither a man nor a woman, Dean.” Sam’s smile was indulgent, but not condescending. Dean still felt stung. “The reason de didn’t let you explain for dir is because you misgendered dir.”

“Really ?!” Dean panicked.

“Just because de looks like a man doesn’t mean de is. De’s not even human.”

“I’m so stupid.”

Sam laughed.

“Don’t sweat it, you’ll apologize tomorrow. Anyone would have done the same mistake unless told beforehand. I thought de was male when I first saw dir too.”

“You’re taking it surprisingly well”, Dean said after a moment.

“Well...” Sam trailed off, and Dean’s attention roused. Sam gave him one of his kicked puppy look. “I have to confess something, do you promise not to be mad ?”

Dean grumbled a “yes”.

“A few years ago... I met a girl.” Dean smirked. “We got on right away and, uh... We fell in love.” Sam was blushing furiously. “You know I’ll never forget Jessica but she was... She was beautiful, and funny, and I was happy with her. However, after some time, she revealed to me that she was a werewolf.” Dean’s eyes widened. “She had been bitten by one, almost killed even, and from then on locked herself in a shack every full moon. She assured me that she had never killed anyone, and every time, I sneaked away from the castle at night to keep a guard on her. But one time...” Sam had difficulties talking past the lump in his throat. “One time, she broke free, and she ran off. I didn’t... I couldn’t track her down. She came back to me a few days afterwards. She was crying, and hurt, and I didn’t know what to do. She told me she killed a man. She begged me, over and over, to kill her. It was incurable, she couldn’t control her werewolf self anymore, and she said it would happen again. She gave me so many reasons to kill her and I- I gave in. She was becoming depressed, and I didn’t want her to be killed by another hunter or another beast, and it’s my duty... to protect the people of the kingdom. She told me that werewolves could only be killed by silver weapons, so I had one forged and I... I killed her”, Sam finished, choking on his words.

“So you knew ? About the silver ?” Dean frowned.

Sam sighed, looking away to hide his teary eyes. If they hadn’t been both snuggled up in their sleeping bags, Dean would have hugged him. Or patted him awkwardly on the shoulder.

“Sorry”, Dean said. “What was her name ?”

“Madison.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this ?”

“Don’t tell me you would have understood, Dean.” The judgement in Sam’s voice made Dean flinch. No, he wouldn’t have. “You were putting on this show of skirt-chasing, I thought you were compensating for something. You had your secrets, so I thought I could have mine.”

“Hey !” Dean interjected softly, not really having much ground to be offended.

They fell silent.

“What did you talk about with Cas, anyway ?” Dean asked.

“I asked dir questions about dirself, dir kind, dir story, what de knew...” Sam answered vaguely. “I also asked dir information about Alastair, because we’re gonna have to stop him if we want to stop these horrors from happening... and to innocent Castiel.”

“You seemed to get on pretty well...” Dean added, remembering them sitting face to face, fondness filling their expressions.

“Yeah ? So what ? I’m not in love with dir, Dean”, Sam snorted.

Dean flustered.

“Shut up !”

 

Woodland sounds woke Dean up: rustling, cracking. He sat up in the tent, was outside of it, staring at a deer, a real one, a few feet ahead of him in the dark woods. It was staring back at him, eerily still, and the moonlight seemed to shine only on it. Dean took a step towards it and it fled, making a mad dash for the deeper woods. Dean ran in its lead, jumping over the dying embers of the camp fire. He was bare-footed and ran like a madman, but the trees didn’t hurt him, didn’t seem to even touch him. There was not a sound, as if the whole of the forest was holding its breath for this pursuit. Everything was hushed, light subdued only for faint curtains of it filtering through the leaves here and there. Dean caught a glance of the deer sometimes and changed direction accordingly but never seemed to catch up until at last he was stumbling into a shadowed clearing where the vegetation had run wild. He walked carefully towards it. The deer waited for him in the middle, suddenly not the little deer he had started to chase but a majestic, graceful stag, its antlers growing high above, like branches, on which flora blossomed. But Dean knew it was the same one; as he raised a hand to its nose, he looked into its deep blue eyes.

Dean jumped awake with a gasp. He scrambled to stand and pushed aside a curtain of the tent. A deer was staring at him. This one fled as soon as it saw him and Dean started to chase it but soon enough he was hurting his feet against the roots and twigs littering the ground. He gave up and returned to the camp, where Sam was starting to wake up.

They went to the clearing, wilting-stained flower crowns on their head but wearing the hunting gear – the only clothes they had thought of bringing. Cas arrived almost instantly. De looked tired and, Dean noted, dir antlers seemed to have grown, the base of them circled with something in tatters – and were those red smears traces of blood ? Cas greeted Sam and Dean with dir usual kindness though, and upon Dean’s giddy proposal, they set off quickly for the Tree King. As Cas led the way, Dean caught up to dir and apologized for having misgendered dir. Cas smiled kindly.

“It’s no trouble, Dean”, de said. “You couldn’t have known, it is not in your culture.”

“But the way you intervened so quickly”, Dean replied, still worried, “I thought you were angry.”

“It’s just that...”, de hesitated. “Demons used to purposefully gender us, and I still...”

“It’s okay, I get it”, Dean said reassuringly, and he took Cas’s hand. “Everything is alright. It’s just me making ignorant assumptions.”

He chanced a glance behind him and found Sam grinning at him, eyebrows raised ; Dean glared.

This silent teasing stopped when they reached the Tree. Dean had wanted to see Sam’s face, but he found himself as dumbfounded at the sight of the Tree King in spring. The very air seemed awash with light, as if the Tree’s microclimate had finally reached its surroundings. What Dean could see of the sky was impossibly blue, and the columns of sunlight pouring through the canopy moved about like golden waterfalls. Dean had never seen a tree so brightly colored, so luminous. The blossoms hung in grapes like a willow’s leaves, the shower of petals falling thickly. The gentle sweet-smelling breeze caressed Dean’s face and he came back to his senses. He suspected the stupor in which he was taken every time he looked upon the Tree King was not only due to its beauty but also to the ancient magic that oozed from it.

He looked at Sam gaping beside him, beaming at his twinkling eyes. Cas was sitting on a root, bringing back memories for Dean. Sam joined dir before Dean, a flow of questions falling eagerly from his mouth. Dean joined them, content to listen to his brother’s excited inquiries and to gaze at Cas’s pleased smile. He surprised them by remembering facts and answering in Cas’s place at times. The topic of the conversation shifted and they continued to talk leisurely, Cas explaining in passing that the odd appearance of dir antlers was because de had shed them.

Dean guessed, by the almost imperceptible thrumming in his legs, that the feeling of bliss that enveloped them came partly from the Tree.

They came to talk about Alastair.

“I was thinking about going back to the castle”, Sam said. “I’ll have a lot more resources to research. I mean, the library alone...”

“But we can’t go back”, Dean reminded him.

“Yeah, but I can sneak in. Come on, Dean, we know this castle like the back of our hands.”

“I’m staying with Cas”, Dean objected quickly.

“I guessed as much. But I can go alone, right ?”

“...Okay”, Dean ceded.

Before Sam left, Cas thanked him, taking his hands in dirs and holding them so close to dir chest that Sam’s fingertips almost touched it. Dean looked at them only with affection and, though he didn’t know why, something akin to pride.

And just like that, he and Castiel were left alone. Dean jumped down from the root, almost running to Cas, took dir face in his hands and kissed dir hungrily.

Cas responded at once, wrapping dir arms around him, nibbling enthusiastically at Dean’s lips. They held each other so tightly they started to tumble and eventually eased themselves on the grass. They spent a long time sprawled over each other, kissing lazily, with the careless sloppiness of young passion. Their tangled limbs aligned their skin flushed to each other but they still reached out to every inch of the other with their hands, grappling playfully. Dean saw a twinkling in Cas’s eyes – like de was remembering something – just before de stroked Dean’s collarbone, his shoulder, his arm, and suddenly took his hand, got him up to lead him toward the trunk of the Tree, between two roots bigger than them both. Dean, confused but as curious as every time Cas showed him something new, understood when he saw the human-sized alcove hollowed out where one of the roots connected to the trunk. On the slightly elevated wooden “ground” were littered, to compose a comfortable nest, flowers and grass in various states of decomposition.

“Is this where you sleep ?” Dean asked, realizing he didn’t even know if Cas slept.

“This is where I rest”, Cas answered. “I wanted to show you this.”

De bent down to retrieve, in a hole in the wood, what looked like a branch carved into a flute. On closer look, Dean knew it only resembled a flute: the pipe separated in two after the mouthpiece, and the holes had all sorts of shapes and sizes. In the wood were sculpted symbols and patterns swirling around the pipes, following some unknown meaning. Dean looked up to Cas’s face.

“You’re gonna play for me ?”

“Of course.”

De climbed the root, standing on it above Dean like on a stage. De put the mouthpiece to dir mouth, and blew. The sound that came out of it was like nothing Dean had ever heard, modulating itself like it was alive. Cas’s fingers moved impossibly fast on the pipes to deliver the melody, the pace picking up Dean’s heartbeat and making it race. The low notes resonated like Cas was breathing dir own voice through the flute, deep and earthy, accompanied by the dull and steady percussions of dir hooves stomping as if de couldn’t help it; but then the tune soared high, so clear Dean could almost have seen it weaving into the air around Cas, and himself, and the Tree. The very atmosphere seemed to ripple with music, and by the end of Cas’s song, which launched into the sky, Dean felt about to burst, an electric energy coursing through his veins. Cas opened the eyes de had closed in dir trance, and looked down at Dean with dir crooked smile.

“Come down here” Dean grinned at dir.

Cas jumped down, trying to subside dir smile like de was afraid of it being too wide. Dean grabbed dir by the hips, pressing himself against dir.

“That was magic”, he said on Cas’s lips. “You’re amazing.”

Cas kissed him, a sort of kiss that made it hard to breathe. Dean blindly led dir backwards. They stumbled, legs fumbling, and Dean pulled Cas with him as he fell on his ass in the nest – it was probably going to be a little sore, but he couldn’t care because Cas was gently biting the taut muscle between his neck and shoulder. His fingers dug in Cas’s back helplessly as he felt waves of heat filling his body – pooling in his groin. He exhaled Cas’s name shakily, pressing his forehead against dir shoulder, holding dir close and pushing dir away at the same time. Cas wasn’t helpful; dir lips ghosted over Dean’s cheekbone, whispering his name. De said it over and over again – Dean hummed at the way it took shape in dir mouth, rolled on dir tongue, and slipped out of dir lips – as de unbuckled Dean’s belt and the straps on his chest. Cas briskly looked up, searching Dean’s eyes.

“Please”, Dean gasped, taking one of Cas’s fidgeting hands and shoving it down his pants.

Cas didn’t spare a moment for thought and took him in hand, which made Dean hiss, sucking in his stomach instinctively not to get scratched by the black claws. He gripped Cas’s shoulders too hard, shivers sliding along his spine. His fingers curled and spasm against Cas’s shoulder blades as Cas mouthed in his hair, as if de was whispering something, soothing him, but it just sent surges of fire straight to his cock, which was being stroked clumsily but relentlessly. The fingers’ texture scraped his sensitive shaft, and the movement was too repetitive to be expert, but it still made him breathe heavily, open-mouthed, between the kisses he squeezed against the warm round of Cas’s shoulder, face hidden. Cas smelled like wood and the air smelled like earth where it landed on Dean’s tongue. He had his legs hooked around Cas’s thick thighs, branding the – strangely rough – skin with the red marks of his nails, stifling his hoarse moans. He let Cas have dir way with him to experience something de clearly hadn’t done before, falling apart along the way. Dean tightened his hold on Cas’s feverish body when he came under the slender and dangerous fingers, groaning muffled against the wet skin of Cas’s collarbone.

They caught their breath, slowly and deeply, still holding onto loose limbs. They stared at each other through their eyelashes for a long time, at a loss for words, but Dean ended up averting his eyes.

Why had he gotten this worked up ? he wondered.

He looked at Cas’s head bowed to wipe the semen off Dean with a leaf, the drop of dir eyelashes, the angle of dir nose. He had never felt lust like that for anyone before. He had never felt love like...

“Dean, are you alright ? You’ve stopped breathing.”

Dean blinked at Cas, suddenly aware that he was holding his breath – although Cas had picked up on it rather fast – and of the bark digging in his back. He motioned for them to get up.

They stood face to face, still holding hands, searching each other’s eyes. Cas’s were inhumanly cobalt blue, dir pupils and irises wider than they should have been.

“Was it okay ?” Cas asked.

“Yes, yes”, Deans answered immediately. “Yes, it was...” He looked away quickly, trying to find the right word. “...Intense”, he breathed out. “S’a shame you can’t, you know...” He gestured vaguely at Cas’s body.

“What ?” De looked down. “No, I don’t care, at all. I was rather enjoying how you reacted to it, how it pleased you”, de continued, matter-of-factly.

Dean tried to smile through his embarrassment.

Cas suddenly turned dir head to look at the Tree with a sort of unexpected yearning, and left Dean’s side, hopping on the root nearest them on all fours. De looked back at Dean questioningly, cocking dir head from side to side like a bird, as if asking why he was not following dir.

“You look more... animal today”, Dean blurted out, finally finding the words to what had been bugging him.

“Do I ?” Cas looked concerned; de stood up and brought a hand up to touch dir own face.

Dean, angry at himself to have worried Cas, started to climb the root.

“No, it’s okay, I just...”

He interrupted himself, believing to have heard a faint shout in the distance. He raised a finger to his lips to silence Cas. He heard the cry again, clearer. It was his name. Again, even closer. It was Sam’s voice, steady even though the urgency with which he screamed was sign of a great distress.

Dean barely had the time to turn and start running in the voice’s direction that Sam busted in the Tree King clearing, flower crown vanished. They both stopped, Sam hands on his knees to catch his breath. He straightened up, chest heaving and gesturing wildly.

“You have to flee, Cas has to flee, dad is, he’s-“

“Sam.” Dean had approached him, hands up to almost-touch him as if he was going to double over. He took his big brother voice.

“Take a deep breath, explain from the start.”

“On the way back home, I crossed Dad and the whole cavalry coming here to burn the forest to the ground- I couldn’t race back here, it would have rose suspicion. They’ve already started setting fire to the trees, everything. I ran here as soon as we split up.”

Dean turned to Cas, hands in his hair, ready to tear it. Cas stood too still for it to be natural. He could smell it now, faintly; a hot acrid odor carried by the breeze.

“They can’t burn the whole forest. It’s impossible. Even just the Tree King is protected, it can’t burn.” Cas was walking closer to the trunk.

“You can stay here now, Cas – I’ll go see where father is and try to drive him away from here-, but you’re going to have to leave this forest, eventually.”

“I can’t, Sam. I am bound to this forest, leaving it would, literally, kill me. Which would render your whole point of me fleeing to save myself moot.”

Sam looked in every direction as if he was going to find a solution in the greenery.

“It’s okay, Sam, go drive dad away, Cas can hide here- can’t you ?”

Cas’s back faced them. Sam looked at Dean, and finally threw his hands up.

“Okay. Stay safe.”

As soon as he had disappeared, Dean climbed to join Cas. De was facing the trunk, dir fingers resting on the bark.

“There are trees that, for years, decades, centuries, will intertwine and twist and reach towards each other and eventually theirs limbs will wrap around each other, binding into a knot, an eternal promise. That was my definition of love for so long.”

Cas’s fingers were rasping against the tree. Dean put his hand on dir shoulder.

“Cas...”

That was when he noticed it.

“... I don’t want to alarm you”, he said slowly, sounding alarmed, “but I think your skin is turning into bark.”

Cas turned to face him, looking at dir hands. Palms up. Palms down.

“It is”, de stated flatly.

Dean shook dir by the shoulders. His throat felt tight but it may have been due to the flames’ scent being much stronger now, stinging his eyes and nose.

“Cas, look at me, please- tell me what to do.”

Cas looked up into the foliage of the Tree King. The spots of light falling through on dir face were feeble. Dir gaze came down to Dean.

“He wants to protect me. He’s calling me back into Him.”

“He’ll hide you ?”

“No. He will absorb me and I will be reborn anew in who-knows-how-many years.”

“But you’re not gonna do that, right ?” Dean squeezed Cas’s upper arms, stopped when he heard and felt a sickening crack under his fingers. “Right ? I’m gonna keep you safe from the hunters, my dad, everyone.”

“I appreciate the thought, Dean, but we both know that’s not possible.” Cas was smiling at him with a fondness tinged with sadness. “For you are one of them” went unsaid.

The air had gotten considerably hotter and this was probably why Dean felt like he was going to cry. Cas gently freed dirself from Dean’s grip and cupped his cheek with such tenderness Dean closed his eyes and leaned into the touch even though it felt like pressing his cheek against twigs.

“Let me go, Dean. It’s okay, I won’t die; we will meet again.”

“In how much time ?” Dean asked, his throat tight again, but hewas already letting Cas back off, letting dir lean all dir weight against the trunk. The antlers rattled against the wood, petals fell on Cas’s shoulders.

“It doesn’t matter; you will wait.” Cas’s smile seemed distant, dir eyes glazed over. “We will meet again”, de repeated.

Dean looked on, helpless, as the bark creaked loudly around Cas’s body and thick sap oozed on dir skin like honey-coloured blood, filling the cracks running along dir limbs like wooden veins. Dean looked down and felt his heart sinking as he saw that Cas’s lower body had completely disappeared.

“Cas, wait.”

Cas’s gaze snapped to Dean, steady and focused again. Dean took dir face in his hands and kissed dir sweet and slow, mouth moving to give as much as to take, Cas’s chapped lips making Dean’s swell. Dean inhaled deeply through his nose, trying to take in Cas’s scent, but all he could smell was burning wood. He whispered something on Cas’s lips before detaching himself, but Cas shook dir head, frowning.

“What ?”, de shouted over the blazing roar around them.

Dean hadn’t even noticed, but all background noise had become loud fire devouring trees, and he didn’t want to chance so much as a glance behind him.

“I love you !” Dean shouted back hoarsely before he lost the courage to say it a second time, but his voice was already wavering. He kept his mouth shut, trapping in the sobs.

Cas blinked at the outburst, and dir blue eyes shone wetly in the unnatural midday darkness. Bark came up dir stomach and forearms now but Dean was not sure if that was why de stood so still. A flicker of amber light catching on dir cheeks made Dean notice the tear tracks, and Cas was crying and he wanted so badly for everything to be alright his hands shook.

Cas’s skin was sleek with sap, tendrils of hair matted to dir neck. Dean had a sudden sense of urgency – perhaps because even though the flames howled and growled as thunderously as a storm, he had sensed Sam shouting for him.

“DEAN ! HIDE CAS !”, his brother yelled once he’d escaped the gag of the agonizing forest.

It was too late; Dean turned around, stepping away from Cas and allowing an arrow as big as a fist to whistle past him and lodge itself into Cas’s shoulder. There were birds and snakes in Cas’s scream, as if de was screaming for the Tree more than for dirself.

John Winchester was here. His coat flapped in the gusts of wind made by the fire behind him, the rugged lines of his face seeming deeper than usual, his face darkened by charcoal. He eyed Dean’s shabby garland with a disgusted crease in his mouth. Beyond him, the treetops bled a reddish glow in the smoke-filled sky.

“Dean. Cut its head off.” His booming voice didn’t need to shout.

Dean could barely breathe. He looked back at Cas. De gave him a slight nod.

“But you’re going to die”, he pleaded in a very, very small voice, turning so that John didn’t see his face.

Cas nodded again. De mouthed carefully. “I love you.”

If only John had arrived later, if only Dean could have delayed the act until Cas was safe... Dean wanted more time, but it was no use. There was no convincing the Hunter King.

“Dean !”

Dean set his jaw, took the knife in his boot. The blade was long and sharp enough; it would only take one strike.

Dean raised the knife, took in every detail he could about Cas.

The splatter of salmon pink across dir cheeks.

The darks curls on dir temples.

Dir ears quivering.

Dir shaky breath.

The blue of dir eyes.

Cas firmly held his gaze. Dean brought down the blade. The sound of it cutting tender flesh and spinal column sliced sickly into Dean’s eardrums, and he could pinpoint the exact moment the life left Cas’s eyes. Dean caught the head by reflex, didn’t look at it. Blood coated his hands, soaked his clothes. As he watched the trunk swallow the rest of Cas’s body, gone limp and covered in red sap, he heard, as if coming from very far away :

“Bring it to me.”

Dean stumbled his way down, slipping on the blood, too numb to watch his steps. Once on the ground, he knelt in the grass, still cradling Cas’s head, closing dir eyes with two trembling fingers. He heard John stomping to him, but didn’t dare raise his head because he would see, he would see the tears sliding down Dean’s cheeks in big drops.

“Father, stop ! Dean, he was- bewitched. I tried to strike sense into him, but he was, he was not himself. You can’t hold him accountable. He got it, after all, right ?”

Bless Sam, even though his lie would have been more believable if he hadn’t hesitated so much telling it.

Dean held up the head, and his hands missed the weight of it as soon as John lifted it from them, splattering blood everywhere. He touched the warm wetness on his brow; anointed in Castiel’s blood.

The fire was still crackling deafeningly all around them.

Dean heaved a sigh.

He found the will to stand up.

He found the will to follow his father back to the castle.

He didn’t find the will to let Cas go.


	2. PART TWO

Dean was grounded to his room like a child, but he didn’t try to get out, not after two weeks, not after two months.

The first weeks, he was restless. He screamed at everyone, at no one. He lashed out at furniture because he couldn’t lash out at himself, trying to throw his if onlys and his regrets with the punches that skinned his knuckles raw. It didn’t work.

So he lay in bed and tried to sleep his grief away, but he was haunted by dreams of ever-fleeing deer in woods where trees bled red, tormented by nightmares in which he slept with Cas’s head and his hands were covered in blood. Flashes of memories drowned in a red flood. Dean always woke up drenched in sweat.

All his efforts going into forgetting, he didn’t eat much, he didn’t talk.

Sam visited him once he was calmed, sat by him and said, with that earnest face of his, “I miss dir too. I regret. We could help each other.” Dean kept on looking at the ceiling, all his concentration focused on letting Cas go, on purging his own body of dir like of a fever. Sam didn’t visit him again.

He was examined by the royal doctor, who didn’t find anything wrong with his physical health, then by the royal psychic, Missouri. Her eyes saw the mourning, but her mouth told the king that Dean was just suffering the after effects of the supposed spell. Dean was distantly grateful to her and to Sam.

 

He was lying on his bed, rubbing his face as if he could scrub away the image of Cas printed on his eyelids, when Sam barged in the room. Dean did jump a little; it had been a while since anyone had actually paid him a visit, not counting when the servants slipped him his meals.

“Dean. I got Alastair. Get up or I kick you out of bed myself.”

Alastair. That ringed a bell.

Dean sat up.

“What ?”, he croaked.

“Well, as I’ve said, I have regrets too, and I want to clean up this whole mess, so I did as I intended to do before- I hunted Alastair down and I caught him. He’s in a cell of the dungeon right now. I figured you’d want some justice too.”

Energy rushed up into Dean like a power surge.

“I do. Let’s go.” His voice was gruff.

Sam barely had the time to register the determined spark lighting up Dean’s dull gaze before his brother was up and walking past him, his entire body leaning forward with intent.

Dean had completely forgotten about Alastair and his stomping was as much foreboding anger as it was self-hatred. Sam took a moment to look at Dean’ tense back, brow knitted, before following him.

The heavy door of the cell creaked when Dean opened it, the light it let in revealing slowly Alastair. Cas had been right, he could have easily passed as a man. He only had three inches high black ribbed horns and since he was stripped down to his breeches Dean could see the patches on his body where the skin seemed to blacken and flake. He was taller than Dean, had a long face, square features and deep-set bloodshot eyes. When the light hit his eyes, Dean thought for a moment they were black as obsidian, but in a blink they were human.

His wrists and ankles were bound in shackles each chained to a corner of the far wall, oozing humidity. The room smelled very bitterly of iron and blood. Dean breathed through his mouth.

Alastair was staring at Dean with a perverted curiosity, smiling a blood-tainted grimace. Dean glanced behind himself as Sam arrived – with a set of knives and pliers.

“You can feel pain, right ?” Dean asked offhandedly.

He punched Alastair, snapping the demon’s head at the same time that Sam laid the plate of instruments on the ground with a clatter.  
Dean turned away, opening his fist and moving his fingers slowly, knuckles cracking, to pick up a dented knife.

“Do you want me to leave or...?” Sam asked him in a low voice.

“Do what you want.”

Dean faced Alastair, who spat blood at his feet and grinned at him.

“You think I’ll see all your scary toys and spill my guts ?” His voice was nasal and taunting and he slurred his words.

Dean heard a grating sound and looked up; Alastair had grown claws. It was laughably useless.

“Yes, actually”, Dean said, finally looking the demon in the eye. “See ? My scary toy-” Dean plunged the knife in Alastair’s stomach up to the hilt and twisted it gradually “-you spilling your guts.”

Alastair groaned, tight-lipped.

“You don’t know how to inflict pain”, he jeered. “You can kill me now, I won’t talk.”

“We’ll see.” Dean poked at Alastair’s throat with the bloodied knife.

He then stilled as he felt a swift whoosh on his left and the all too familiar, even now, sound of a limb being severed. The chain retaining Alastair’s right arm rattled with it on the wall. Blood poured from Alastair’s shoulder.

“Ah, that won’t, hm, kill me...” He, incredibly, lifted the corners of his mouth in what could have been called a smile.

“Good”, Sam said.

Dean looked at him and saw the idea in his eyes. He cut off Alastair’s left leg, which hit the floor dully. The ferrous wafts filling the cell almost made him gag. He looked up at a clang; Alastair’s left hand, its sharp nails seeping black into the fingers’ skin, was gripping its chain hard to keep him upright. Dean planted his knife in the taut muscle of the demon’s arm.

“And how do we kill you, then ?” he asked.

Alastair hung his head, his still smiling lips moving without a sound. Dean thought he heard “heart”. He took back his knife, exchanged a look and a nod with Sam, and they cut the remaining limbs off at the same time. Alastair’s mangled body fell on the sticky red floor with a wet slap and a groan through clenched teeth. Sam saw black tendrils trying to reconnect the limbs to the stumps, blinking in and out of view like he wasn’t meant to see it, but it was no use; they were chained, and he kept his foot on Alastair’s torso. Dean planted his knife deeply in Alastair’s throat, effectively pinning him to the floor. Sam removed his foot. Dean took a pair of pliers and enucleated Alastair roughly, leaving a mess of torn red eyelids behind. He dropped the eyeballs and stepped on them. They burst with a disgustingly soggy sound, but as soon as Dean stepped away they reformed themselves, so Sam picked them up quickly, keeping them in hand for lack of a container.

“Wow”, Dean exclaimed, “you’re right, you’re very resilient to pain. Well, it’s no use continuing if you won’t talk. You can leave anytime !”

He and Sam stormed off, leaving the door of the cell open. They were in the corridor when they heard the strained growl.

“Wait !”

They smirked and came back to the demon. Sam played with the eyeballs in his hand.

“Yes ?” he asked with mock-politeness.

“I, ah, I’ll talk”, Alastair said calmly, even though there was blood gurgling in his strangled voice.

“I set up this whole thing to prepare the comeback of Lucifer, the great Faun.” He grinned wolfishly at the ceiling he couldn’t see. “Set a whole country of hunters against his worst enemies to make his job easy when he gets here. This time no one will stop us from slaughtering you all.”

“Sorry to break it to you”, Dean said in a delighted tone as soon as the demon was finished, “but there’s not one deer hybrid left in this country. Thanks to you though, we’re gonna alert them and stop the Devil. That’s so nice of you.” Dean crouched beside Alastair, approached his face to his. “Sincerely, thank you.”

Alastair’s lips were pursed into a thin line. Dean stabbed at his heart violently, repeatedly, mauling the flesh, until Sam stepped in and stayed his arm. Dean dropped the knife at once, got up and left the cell. He wiped his brow, smearing blood over it in the process. His throat was tight with relents of bile. Everything he saw seemed to be covered in red stains. He had tortured before. He had done worse before. He couldn’t wait to take a bath.

 

Sam came find him the next day. He looked sheepish, like he was hesitating to smile engagingly.

“So we’ll do it right ? We’re gonna find Cas’s pack and warn them ?”

“Yeah”, Dean answered. He felt strange; he wanted to do this but he also wanted to stay here, he wanted to know Cas’s siblings but he also wanted to never hear that name again. “Yeah, we’ll do that. We can’t tell dad, though.”

Sam nodded. He hadn’t spoken to their father in months either.

“We can start with the Harvelle kingdom, there’s a pretty big forest near the southwest border of here,” Dean said.

“Okay, I’ll go start packing and prepare the horses. When do we leave ?”

“Tomorrow at dawn.”

Sam left his room and Dean suddenly noticed how alone he’d been. He felt tired to the bone and restless at the same time. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to leave right now.

He got up from his bed, took a bag out of a cupboard, and started throwing clothes and tools in it.

 

The first thing Dean registered when they were on the road was that it was not as hot as he had thought it would be. Summer, Dean felt, has waned as quickly as melting wax with the burning flames of Castiel’s death.

After a dozen miles, Sam and Dean stopped galloping. They hadn’t been discreet when they had left, but they hadn’t said where they were going. They rode mostly in silence, sometimes briefly discussing the path to take, the direction to go in. The sunrise’s colors were pale, and even when the sun reached its peak in the clear sky, thin clouds came faint its warming rays.

They avoided going through towns, and the detour they ended up taking made them travel through the wide expanses of green meadows where the uncut blades of grass swayed in the wind and through barren plains that the summer sun had burned, using crooked cobblestoned roads that they always feared their horses would trip on.

Dean was glad to feel Impala’s muscles rolling beneath his thighs again, glad to find how in tune they were still, when she responded to the slightest pull of reins. He often caressed her crest, carding his fingers through the short black fuzz.

They travelled for days until they saw small mountains huddling on the horizon on their right. They could see the silhouette of pinewoods. They went forth towards the south, sure to soon cross the border of the Harvelle Kingdom.

The dirt path they followed snaked through a forest, and they knew they were in new territory. Dean, wary, observed his surroundings. Here were birches and beeches shooting upright in the sky, spaced evenly, here was a flat sturdy ground where the flowers and grass didn’t seem to struggle to grow, here were sounds of the wild life, birds and boars, noisily populating the woods like they should have been. Here the forest was just trees and animals, and Dean felt lost.

The path ended abruptly.

The space between the trees was wide though, and Sam and Dean kept going forward in hope that the path would pick up, but to no avail. A hush had fallen over them. They sensed magic down their spines. Trunks grew thicker. Sunlight became shadowed. Something felt familiar. They kept going forward.

Thickets gathered around the trees and branches grew lower. It was harder to see ahead, harder to follow a straight line. There were sudden shifts in the air around them, sudden shadows hiding behind trees and in the corner of their eyes. The horses were advancing begrudgingly, their steps jittery. Sam and Dean kept turning their head to every side, trying to catch a glimpse of what they could feel surrounding them, but a snap made them focus back straight ahead. A half-human deer hybrid stepped out of the darkness in front of them, and Castiel’s name got stuck in Dean’s throat. It wasn’t Cas, of course; this rosy face was not Cas’s, these clear blue eyes were not Cas’s, this auburn hair attached on the nape of the creature’s neck was not Cas’s. De stood tall and glaring, and Dean noticed the black claws growing out of dir fingers; Dean looked around and caught Sam’s wide-eyed worried gaze before seeing the swarm of hybrids closing in on them, menacing in their silence and unblinking stare, their unstoppable approach. The horses were growing more nervous by the minute. Even though Sam and Dean were clearly in danger, Dean couldn’t believe his luck that he had found what – who – they had been looking for so easily.

Well, here came the difficult part.

“I’m Dean Winchester, and this is Sam, my brother – We’re the princes from the neighbouring kingdom...”

The creatures didn’t say anything.

“Castiel sent us”, he continued quickly. Saying Cas’s full name was effortless, the last syllable keeping the nickname from stinging his tongue.

The name stopped the creatures dead in their tracks.

Dean climbed down from his horse; Sam followed him. They approached who they thought was the leader, reins in hand.

“Castiel, you say ?” the leader asked, dir voice a higher pitch than Cas’s but just as posed. “How is de ?”

Dean, speechless, moved his mouth helplessly.

“Dead”, Sam supplied, voice soft and sorrowful.

“Killed”, Dean corrected bitterly.

“By whom ?”

“Alastair”, Sam smoothly lied during Dean’s second of hesitation.

They could feel as much as they could hear the murmur swaying the deer around them.

“We killed him, but not before he told us that Lucifer was coming back”, Dean said.

The hum grew louder, but Dean kept his eyes trained on the leader’s stern face – surprised, yes, but in control of dir emotions –, not trusting himself to not look for Cas’s face among the hybrids.

Time stretched on until finally, when silence had returned, the leader spoke again.

“I am Naomi. Thank you for warning us, Sam and Dean Winchester.”

And de turned around. Dean frowned.

“Wait ! What are you gonna do ?”

Naomi didn’t even face him.

“Thank you for warning us”, de repeated. “We will handle it.”

“Let us help,” Sam said before Dean could be rude.

“This is our affairs.” Dir voice was cold and Dean was fed up with talking to the back of dir head.

“Like hell it is !” His voice sounded too loud and he put a hand on Naomi’s shoulder to turn dir around.

He was sure he could hear a gasp and he instantly got why. With a perfectly blank expression, Naomi managed to drill dir anger in the intensity of dir gaze on Dean’s hand, his face, his hand again. Dean dropped his hand hastily but kept on talking.

“They want to kill humans too ! And you’re not... alone in wanting revenge-“

Dean saw the hint of a confused frown before Naomi’s ears perked up and de raised a hand to silence him. Dean listened attentively but it took a few moments still until he heard it: a great movement in the forest, coming towards them, too whole to be woodland animals, loud in its attempt to be silent. The deer started to back away and when the first arrow flew they rushed under cover, running away. Sam had uselessly extended his arms as if to build a wall to protect their escape. The arrows stopped and they came out- the hunters.

Sam and Dean hadn’t heard them coming because clearly they did not operate like in the Winchester kingdom. Their keyword seemed to be infiltration. Apart from their bows, Dean could see the glint of metal under their strange getup. They had animal furs draped over their shoulders, face hidden by the head. There were a lot of deer, a few wolves. Their very stance was one of a wary, feral thing, ready to jump and attack. One of them in the front stood straighter, walking towards the brothers with a spear ready to pierce them. The person had a small frame and Dean understood why when they pushed their deer head away and back to hang off their shoulders behind them : waves of blond hair, a thin face ; it was a girl, probably not that younger than Sam. She was glaring at them with a lot of strength for such a small person.

“What is this ?”

Dean sighed and, with a sense of déjà-vu, said:

“We’re the princes from the neighbouring kingdom, we came here to warn...”

The girl, narrowing her eyes at them, interrupted him:

“Wait a second... Dean Winchester ?”

“Yes ?” Dean frowned.

He heard Sam exclaim in wonder beside him : “Jo ?”

Dean snapped his attention back to the girl. Jo Harvelle, princess of this kingdom, nodded but still looked gobsmacked.

“And Sam ! Wow, you look so... tall. It’s been, what, a decade ?” She resumed looking suspicious, her hand gripping her spear. “And what are you doing here ?”

“As I was saying, we came here to warn the deer people of the return of a monster threatening all species, us and them included”, Dean said.

Jo looked at him like he’d grown another head. “Uh, but aren’t deer hybrids going on killing sprees these days ? We got this from your father.” Dean could hear the twinge in the last word, and he remembered how her dad got killed on a hunt with John. Right now, he was not feeling so pleased to hear about his dad either.

“That’s bullshit.”

“Yeah”, Sam filled in. “Demons are framing the deer people, in order to prepare the arrival of this monster, their leader, a faun.”  
She looked between them and clenched her jaw. She pointed vaguely to a direction behind her with her chin.

“Come back with us. You’ll explain all that to Ellen.”

“Alright, grumpy.”

Jo pursed her lips at Dean.

As they fell in line to accompany Jo and her hunters back to the royal castle and catch up on years of estrangement, they went unaware that deer had lingered long enough to see and hear Sam and Dean defend them.

 

Dean had accurately thought he had been remembering the Harvelle castle bigger than it actually was; but he hadn’t expected his childhood memory to have made it and the Winchester castle resemble each other so much. And yet, where the Winchester castle was sturdy, grim and its thick walls filled with ever-lasting grief, the Harvelle castle was warm, numerous towers spiralling high, bustling with people of all places and all backgrounds. Dean cast looks at their faces rushing past him, all the while avoiding their glances, following Jo with a sense of purpose. He and Sam were princes here.

The lines set deep in Ellen’s face were more tiredness than age. She still gave them that quick warm smile of hers, but settled rapidly into a serious mindset, leaning forward in her throne. She assessed the situation silently, frowning when their explanations got vague around the deer, their dad, their involvement. She told them she would see how to handle this diplomatically and to go to sleep, giving them the royal guest suite.

 

In Dean’s dreams, Cas didn't speak. When de opened dir mouths, asphodels and rainflowers flowed forth, hissing past dir lips, coated in blood. Dir flesh turned to bark under Dean’s fingers and dir skin peeled away, green, under his eyes. So he dreamed that Cas’s lips were sealed, he rendered dir mute, and tried desperately to search for a meaning in the way dir eyes looked at him. They watched him pace, blinked at his screams, watered at his tears. Castiel seemed trapped in the wide white expanse of Dean’s dreamscape, and Dean felt like if de managed to get words out, de would be free from- this. From death, perhaps.

Dean woke in the middle of the night, chest heaving. He had spent his latest minutes of sleep frantically tearing at the brambles coming of Cas’s mouth with a heavy flow of blood. He looked at his hands, untarnished. The whisper of the sheets echoed on the other side of the wall, where Sam slept. Soon enough, Sam was in the doorframe, squinting at Dean through the dark.

“You okay ?”

“Peachy, Sam.” Dean answered dryly. “Go back to sleep.”

Sam crossed his arms, definitely stepped into Dean’s room. “You know I went through the exact same thing, right ?”

“We’re not having this conversation.” Dean tossed and turned his back on Sam. He could hear his little brother huff angrily behind him.

“We are having it, Dean ! Not only do I know the nightmares, the guilt, but I think you’ve forgotten that Cas was also my friend !” he said with that indignant pitch in his voice.

Dean turned sharply, sitting up. He could see the spark of triumph in Sam’s eyes, to have roused him, so he snapped: “Your grief is not my grief.”

“But maybe we can ease each other’s ?”

“Dir blood is not on your hands. This is not about you, or me, this is about innocent blood being spilled for wrong reasons, this is about an innocent soul who we denied peace.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

They stared at each other. _How many souls have we killed because we presumed they were monsters ?_

Dean lay down again.

“I’m sorry, Sam”, he murmured to the wall. “I can’t.” He could hear Sam sliding down the wall, sitting in the corner. Dean could hear his breath, and, when he glanced behind him, see the glint of his eyes watching him in the dark.

Dean’s eyes finally accepted sleep, his mind frantically trying to join Castiel in limbo. He was tired. He didn’t think he could bear Sam’s grief also.

 

In the early, pale morning, Dean woke up before Sam, who had slumped on the floor in the night. Dean hauled him in his own bed, then dressed himself quietly. He took a look at his brother’s peaceful sleeping form as he slipped out of the room, out of the castle, greeting the servants with his most charming smile.

He took the road that led straight to the forest, the muted dawn lighting his path. It was only when he was deep among the damp trunks and wrinkling leaves that he realized he had no idea where the deer people actually lived. His hunter instincts kicked in without him even noticing; he looked with piercing eyes for broken twigs, parted the litter of leaves with his foot to uncover hoofprints in the dew-engorged ground, breathed deeply the woodland air to take apart the smells that composed it.

Until he caught sight of antlers adorned by a flower crown. Dean stopped dead in his tracks, breath held, face blanking out. Was this another dream ? Was he losing his grip on reality ? His feet dragged him forward as though to go against his own sudden fear. He stumbled in a copse where the trees seemed to give space to the deer person sitting in its midst. De was busy wreathing flowers with quick fingers, sharp nails cutting stems, but Dean could see by the movements of dir ears that de had heard him arrive. De was not Castiel, tangled red hair falling on dir naked shoulders, and relief and disappointment wared to twinge Dean’s heart the hardest.

“Hi”, he said.

The deer looked up. De had shining green eyes and a pointy nose, and dir fur would have been more suited for a fox.

“Hello”, de said, most naturally.

Dean stayed still, limbs useless.

“Come closer.” Dean did. “Who are you ?” Genuine curiosity in dir voice. De hadn’t been there the day before.

“I’m- Dean…”

“And I’m Anna ! Sit.” De patted the ground beside dir. Dean sat, warily. None of dir people had ever welcomed him like this, even Cas.

“Why aren’t you wary of me ? Your kind doesn’t seem to like humans much.”

“So you’ve met them ! Humans do hunt us, to be fair.” Dean conceded with a tilt of his head. “Well, I… I can trust you, right ?” Dean nodded. “Do not tell my people, but I’ve always wanted to be human.” De looked forlornly at the pieces of sky visible through the foliage. “This life is boring to me. I wish I could get in my tree and be reborn as a human, but that is not possible.”

“How do you know it’s not possible ?”

“I don’t, but…”

Dean smiled at dir. Anna smiled back.

“You can call me a girl, if you want.” She said it brazenly, like she had always wanted to but had never met the right person.

“Well, you’re a very pretty girl, Anna”, Dean said kindly, nudging her shoulder with his own.

He felt comfortable now, in a reminiscent way.

“I knew someone like you who used to make these too.” He pointed to the flowers in her hands.

She turned to him, and he was taken aback by the twinkling in her eyes.

“You mean Castiel ?” she exclaimed.

Dean’s throat closed up at once and he nodded.

“We used to do this together. I haven’t seen dir in so long… Is de doing well ? In the Chitaqua forest ?” She saw Dean’s face, gaping in horror. “What ?”

“De is… de’s dead.”

She looked at him, mouth slowly parting in shock, then looked away as sadness settled in.

“How ?” she asked.

“De was killed by Alastair, because the demons are preparing the return of Lucifer”, Dean says. It almost felt like the truth. Anna took it in, the lines of her face hardening. “I warned your people yesterday…”

She seemed far away now, like she was not listening to him, but she was.

“Cas was- my friend, and I want to avenge dir, but I actually don’t really know what’s going on, or what happened last time, or why Cas could not leave Chitaqua…” A part of Dean revolted against himself at this fishing for information.

Anna still didn’t look at him, but it was pointedly now, not at all as if she was lost in thought but as if the answers he sought made her uneasy.

“Castiel was a war hero, Dean Winchester.”

Anna and Dean both jumped as two deer people came out in their small haven, one small and blond with arching eyebrows, the other tall with short brown hair and sad eyes. The former introduced dirself as Rachel; the latter as Inias. They were the ones who saw Sam and Dean defend them.

“I was under dir orders during the first war against the demons.” This was Rachel. “De was ruthless, de killed so many of them… We could not have won without dir.”

“Castiel was under my orders”, Anna said, spat it almost, “at first. After our leaders died – Michael, Raphael, Gabriel – de took the lead, because of people like you who worshipped dir for dir kills. De got drunk on power. We used dir and after we sealed Lucifer away, we banished dir, sealed dir too in the Chitaqua forest. This is not a good story.” She was glaring sourly at Rachel and Inias.

Dean felt sick to his stomach. I’ve never killed people. I’m not a killer. Cas had lied to his face. Dean got up in a blur.

“I… have to go.”

Only when he was well away from them and couldn’t find his way back did he feel regret for not at least having said goodbye to Anna. He liked her, he decided.

When he was back in the castle, he crossed Jo’s path.

“Oh, hey Dean ! My mom has decided to assemble a delegation of hunters to meet the deer and decide of a plan of action. You and Sam can come of course; actually, you and Sam have to come.”

“Alright, I’ll tell Sam.” Dean forced a teasing smile, to recall the memory of them three’s shenanigans when they were younger.

“I already told him”, Jo said, apologetic.

The moment floated away, awkwardly slipping from their nostalgic fingers. Friendship is an odd thing: everlasting and fleeting in the same breath, strong as a forest and frail as a garden needing to be tended too.

Dean took his leave.

 

When Cas came to him that night, something was different. De towered over him like a dangerous god, the wind howling in dir bleeding antlers, the light spilling out of dir searing eyes, the press of dir mouth against Dean’s hard and threatening. Dean drank dir in all the same, but instead of the usual sweetness, Cas seemed to pour bitter honey down his throat. Cas kissed the stubble on his jaw, the jut of his Adam’s apple, and the scrap of dir chapped lips against his skin made Dean moan even as Cas’s hands circled his waist bruisingly, trapping him in place. Cas sank lower and lower, dir mouth hot, almost scorchingly so, on Dean’s chest and stomach. Cas nosed at the coarse hair between Dean’s legs and took him in dir mouth without a second of hesitation. Dean bent over, his breath wrenched out of him so hard it brushed the top of Cas’s hair, a rotten stench filling his lungs in turn, and Dean’s fingernails scraped Cas’s tan shoulders raw. Dean’s legs shook weakly and he touched Cas’s cheek, feeling the shape of himself in dir mouth. Cas withdrew until dir lips were only on the head of Dean’s cock and de looked up; the white of dir eyes was a resentful red, and Dean held his breath. And then the pull of Cas’s mouth sucked him in again, on the brink of painful.

Dean cried out and came gripping the sheets.

“Dean ?” he heard faintly from the other side of the wall.

He kept quiet as he got up and wiped himself and the silk sheets, face burning.

 

When the delegation gathered the next day, Sam clasped his shoulder, throwing him a concerned gaze. Dean answered with a quick almost-smile.

It was only to Sam’s suggestion that Ellen made her hunters drop the animal furs and only keep small hidden blades. They kept a poised readiness to attack as they made their way through the forest, Sam and Dean observed. They lacked Dean’s chance in stumbling upon deer people and the sun was high and hot in the sky when they found them, under a wide copse of yellowing trees, sitting between the roots and against the trunks. Dean squinted to see what they were crafting in their dark hands: sharply sculpted rocks tied to light wooden staffs to make spears. Those were brandished as soon as they saw the hunters arrive. Ellen, in the front, held up her empty hands.

“I seek to speak to your leader, Naomi.” Dean had told her the name. “I am the queen of this land, Ellen Harvelle. We wish to offer our help in the war against the demons.”

The deer people all exchanged glances and threw the delegation skeptic looks. Naomi walked forward, chin proud and mouth darkly amused and annoyed at the same time.

“You are not the queen here. This is our land, you do not rule over us. We will deal with this alone, like we did before, without you, who do not know a single thing about the situation and will only hinder us.”

The whole of the delegation bristled under the insult, and when Ellen spoke again, the effort to stay diplomatic strained her normally deep voice.

“I don’t think you realize what’s at stake for all of us here and why playing solo is not only childish, but also…”

As the air and the mood tensed up, Dean felt a tug at his arm and a small deer person with a youthful face and bright eyes took him aside.

“You’re Dean Winchester ?” de whispered.

“Yes…”

“I’m Samandriel, nice to meet you. Come with me, Anna wants to see you.”

And de was drawing Dean away with surprising strength, leaving Dean to mutter “Wait!” as he tried to grab at Sam, to no avail.

They started to leave the forest, climbing up a slope, Samandriel babbling all the way.

“What was Castiel like, the last time you saw dir ?”

“Tired”, Dean answered, to shut dir up.

They arrived on top of a cliff, and Anna’s red hair fluttered in the wind. She waved at him.

“I’ll leave you two”, Samandriel said, shuffling dir feet.

“Yeah”, Dean said, relieved to say goodbye to another fan of Castiel the War Hero. They made his head ache.

“Hello, Dean”, Anna said.

“Hi”, Dean smiled. “Things are heating up, over there.” He pointed behind him with his thumb. “So why did you want to see me ?”

“I wanted to show you something. Come closer.”

He joined her on the edge of the cliff, and looked down.

“Is that… ?”

“That’s the lake in which we trapped Lucifer, the gate to Hell.”

It lay at the foot of the cliff, like that deadly spring Sam and Dean had found all those years ago, and it had a sharp-edged shore, as if someone had dug up the earth and filled it with water like a cup.

“We performed a spell, all of us around it, as Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel dragged Lucifer down, to seal the gate below the water.”

As Dean opened his mouth to thank her for giving him answers, the water began to sizzle. He gave a wide-eyed look to Anna, whose eyes were also bulging, and they flattened themselves to the ground, rocks digging in their skin. They observed in awe as the water boiled in great bubbles that popped in an ashy smell and slowly something red rose out of it: red hair flowing in waves untouched by water, a criminal fire where Anna’s is a warm hearth. The lake was too far below for Dean to make out what it was, but he saw the humanoid silhouette walking on the surface of the water like on glass, he saw the scorched black joints, he saw the twisted horns, he saw the impossible burning trail the demon left in its wake. Anna gasped beside him.

“It’s Abaddon !” she exclaimed in a quiet breath.

“Who ?”

“Lucifer’s second-in-command ! She was so dangerous we drowned her alongside him.” Anna’s eyes didn’t leave Abaddon’s form until it disappeared in the woods on the other side of the lake, then she looked behind her.

“They actually asked me to stand guard in case something like that happened. I should go warn them. You… should go talk to Ruby…”

Dean, confused but alert, frowned.

“Who ?” he asked, remembering perfectly well the Trinity Cas had told him about.

“Uh, it’s… She’s a demon… who saved my life.” Incredibly, a blush crept up Anna’s cheeks and nose. “She has a lot of power in the demon clan”, she continued with a firmer voice. “If you reach her before Abaddon, there’s a chance you can twist the demons’ loyalty.”

“Okay”, Dean said, “but I’m still going with you because I left my brother down there.”

On the way down, Anna asked him to tell her about Sam, and the praises flowed from Dean’s tongue so easily he surprised himself.

 

“Sammy, come here!”

Sam slipped between the arguing and departing hunters and followed the hushed call of his brother’s voice.

Dean filled the long trip to the woods on the other side of the lake by telling Sam everything Anna had told him, everything he had learned, but Sam ended up admitting he already knew, from Cas. Dean dropped into a sullen silence.

When finally they reached the dark forest, they became alert. They looked at the sky and the blue was all gone. They looked at the trees and the green was all gone. Autumn seemed to have come all at once, sparking in the ruby-red and gold-yellow leaves still clinging to their wooden homes, and in the copper-brown ones that crunched under Sam’s and Dean’s feet. The copses were dusky, invaded by moss-covered rocks and boulders, and the roots were tortuous, slithering to make them trip, and they grabbed unconsciously at each other while going deeper and deeper, a smell not unlike sulfur whirling past and around them in strong wafts.  
They heard voices and readied their weapons – just the small blades that they had brought. The shadows slowly took on recognizable shapes; Dean saw the same humanoid creatures, with their black eyes and black horns and black flaking patches of skin, passing sharply beside them. He saw them even better when he and Sam arrive at their nest and the demons turned their empty eyes on them from where they were slouching in bone-like branches – except one, Dean noticed, who continued to feed an apple to a very human man whose boyish face was tainted by wickedness, whose skin bloomed with scarlet welts and gleaming white scars, and whose nudity was hidden by a bearskin. Dean averted his eyes, disgusted.

“We’re here for Ruby !” he shouted.

She dropped in front of them, making them jump into a fighting stance, muscles taut and tense. Her black scales stood out on her pale skin, as did her dark hair, her long horns twisting backwards and her mouth wide, wider still as she smiled at them without any trace of kindness. She blinked and the ink of her eyes was drained by human pupils.

“That’s me. What do you want, except death ?”

With a glance, Dean silently asked Sam to be on the lookout for other demons while he talked with Ruby. He already saw two demons, one tall and blonde, the other petite and dark-haired, stepping in with a warning stare a little way behind Ruby. Their claws were sharp.

“Anna sends us”, Dean said assertively.

He thought Ruby’s expression softened, very faintly, very briefly, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Do you know that Lucifer is coming back ?”

Ruby narrowed her eyes. “Of course.”

“Will you follow him again ?”

Dean felt Sam tugging on his jacket at the same time as he heard:

“No.”

Dean had only seen her once before, and from afar, but he recognized Abaddon; by the way the flames of her hair licked her face and shoulders, by the way her red-tinted black scales shone almost all over her body, by the way she walked over like the very air should have been bowing to her. Her lips were the color of newly spilled blood around the gash of her mouth as she clasped Ruby’s neck and devoured her mouth. Dean raised an eyebrow.

Abaddon turned to them with that same wolfish, amused smile Ruby had had. She approached dangerously close, muscles rolling like snakes under her skin.

“Boys”, she said, and her tone dripped with condescension, “you dare ask if we will follow that poor excuse of a ruler again ?” Her voice seemed to sizzle in her throat. “I can’t blame you, he is awe-inspiring, but don’t you know ? He is just a faun, a petty one at that, a creature who is not above us and certainly has no right to rule over demons.” Her eyes filled with black. “I endured hundreds of years with him in Hell,” – her words strained – “I know him. He doesn’t care about demons. He cares about power over others. I am the rightful queen of demons. He is out there but I got here before him. If he raises an army, it will be without us.”

Her chin was jutted in righteousness and, for a moment, the light falling through the leaves crowded around her horns like a crown, and she did look like a queen.

“So will you help us send him back to Hell ?” Sam dared to ask. “We’re already gathering deer people and human hunters.”

Abaddon’s gaze on him was suddenly incisive as a knife and Dean threw instinctively an arm out over his brother’s middle.

“You think you can command me ?”

“That’s not what we were saying-” Dean began.

“You’re on your own.”

Sam and Dean stepped back like she had pushed them.

“Can you at least tell us where Lucifer is ?” Sam tried.

“He’s looking for Azazel.”

It was Ruby who answered. By the look Abaddon gave her, Sam and Dean thought it best to leave as quickly as they could without running, but just before they turned on their heels, Dean said:

“Azazel is dead.”

And he caught Abaddon grinning, her teeth as white and sharp as broken bones behind her bloody lips.

 

“Anna ! Anna !” Dean called when they were back in what they now thought of as the deer’s forest.

They passed by a few deer persons who gave them looks. Dean was pretty sure they were both bleeding from brambles cut.

Finally, Anna met them, eyes searching their faces to know what had happened.

“We have a very possible shot at catching Lucifer. Can you help us getting a message through your people ?”

“Yeah, I’ll try my best, come along.”

She stormed into the deer’s nest, calling everyone to listen. They slowly came encircling them tightly with gruff expressions.

“Uh…” Dean started. “As you know, Abaddon has come back. She has returned with the other demons and made them drop Lucifer. He has no support from them and is seeking his former ally Azazel, who he doesn’t know is dead, so he must be on his way to the kingdom we come from, to the east. We can corner him and do that trapping thing of yours in the lake gate again. But with the hunters.”

The deer all stared at him, at Sam, at Anna, at one another; and at last, at Naomi, who spoke up.

“Thank you for your help. We accept your aid in catching Lucifer but I warn you: you must not hinder us.”

“We won’t. Ok, uh- thanks. See ya.”

They fidgeted under the deer’s side-eyeing and left, waving back at Anna.

 

By the time they came out of the forest and into view of the Harvelle castle, night had fallen, the last traces of sunset in the pink underlines of the clouds near the horizon. A heavy and dark blanket of clouds was crawling over from the east; a storm was coming.  
Sam and Dean went directly to their room, intending to take the case to Ellen first thing in the morning. They took cards and played late into the night, muted and closed off in their expectations of the hunt to come, the biggest one they had faced yet.

The next day, the hunters present in the throne room threw them nasty looks as they explained what they had discovered and done and planned. Ellen seemed annoyed, her lips thin and her face stern, to see that they had decided what they would do without consulting her first – they couldn’t blame her. She did end up agreeing to their plan and began to snap orders to gather and arm her hunters. Jo was the first one ready, giddily joining their side with a dark smile, her eyes hidden by the dead wolf head, the rest of the wolfskin bouncing on her limbs. She showed them her bow and the numerous blades strapped to her suit underneath with an excitation that reminded Dean of his younger self. With a quick look around, Dean saw the other hunters grabbing spears and bows, shrugging on their wolfskins and bearskins, painting their faces, making themselves bestially dangerous.

The walk to the forest was stomped upon by big raindrops and by steps weighed down by dread, and roared with distant thunder and quiet preparation for the hunt ahead. First, they sought out the deer people, whom they found waiting for them with closed faces and silent disapproval – eyeing the animals the hunters wore and could never pretend to be. The cold sun was nowhere to be seen, rainclouds smothering any warmth it could have given. A few of the deer (Anna first) and a few of the hunters (Sam and Dean first) began to speak to one another, mingling the groups. The deer made a description of Lucifer. They would wait at the lake, circling it, ready to cast the spell. The hunters would hunt Lucifer down and bring him to it, the easiest way being to corner him at the edge of the cliff- and drop him off. It sounded simple. Everyone liked this plan and nodded. The mutual wariness seemed to have eased off but Dean suspected it had to do with the projection of their forces in a united direction – Lucifer – and the fact that they wouldn’t have to stay and work closely with each other. As Ellen explained the formation they would use to roam the forest, Dean looked from the corner of his eye at the deer leaving, shoulders squared, the last thing he heard of them being the synchronized thump of their spears.

Dean quite frankly loathed autumnal hunts. Each move was crisp: the balance of his arms in the air, his steps on the litter of dead leaves, the hairs raised by the cold on the nape of his neck. He felt like he couldn’t be as deadly silent as he should have been. Worst of all were the downpour and the wind hampering his sight and hearing. He envied Sam’s ability to slip his weight in the air carelessly, even though he was bulkier than Dean. Dean’s heart was beating sluggishly and he could almost hear the pound of Sam’s own heartbeat in contrast. The sun seeping in the cracks of the black mass of clouds shone, albeit weakly, on the amber and honey and golden leaves, making the trees look as if they were on fire. The only thing appeasing Dean’s memories was the smell: just cold, seizing and shivering in his nose; and the look of these woods, too neat to be Chitaqua.

The morning mist was thick around their legs and their feet were sucked into the mud every so often; even though they were not noisy, they knew they were too loud. It wasn’t surprising, then, that they didn’t find Lucifer, but that he found them.

They both saw his shadow between the trees ahead, but it was already too late: he descended on them upfront, treading with intent- but wrathless. He resembled the deer people except he was goatlike, the curl of his horns big and thick and the cut in the middle of his hooves deeper. He himself was huge and tall, his skin grey and marked with rune-like scars, which painted rot and decay on his face topped by dirty blond hair. He was grinning a sharp-toothed smile, clawed hands open as he walked towards them. Sam had moved closer to Dean’s side and Dean threw his arm in front of his brother to protect him; but right at this moment, he saw the tree line ending the woods and the slope of the cliff just beyond Lucifer. With barely a nudge and a look, he signaled to Sam: just as Lucifer’s mouth started forming words, they both jumped on him, blades in both their hands, if not to harm him then to push him backward. They did manage to make him stumble with their combined thrown weights, but the blades slipped on Lucifer’s skin like blunt fingers on a marble wall, barely making scratches. They ended up just beyond the forest, crunching leaves giving way to wet grass. Lucifer swatted Sam and Dean away like annoying insects and laughed.

“Now, I’m sure you realize I did nothing to deserve an attack like this. It would be in my right to kill you, yet I do not do it.”

“Cut that out, we know your true nature. You see us as harmless. You think you can kill us whenever you want and that we are not worthy of your attention.”

Lucifer’s bloodshot eyes appraised Sam as he talked. Dean didn’t like it.

“You seem to know an awful lot about me. That’s a bit unequal, don’t you think ?”

Dean wanted to bash his smarmy face in.

“Oh yeah we know about you, you sick murderer,” he spat. “We know about the blood on your hands, we know you tried and failed to get the demons on your side again, and we know you’re looking for Azazel. Whom we killed, by the way.” Dean allowed himself to jut his chin.

At his last words, Lucifer didn’t show surprise and his smile didn’t falter, but he stepped back.

“I don’t need him.”

“You sure ?”

That was when the hunters, whom Dean was seeing slowly circling them under the cover of the trees, came out, bows drawn, their furs matted by the rain covering their features. They all advanced, Sam and Dean too, making Lucifer reflexively take one, two steps back. The scene flashed stark white, a lightning bolt splitting the sky in two. Lucifer had that chuckle again, on the edge of contempt.

“You’ve already seen you can’t harm me like that.”

“But we can topple you”, Sam said, a corner of his lips twitching upwards.

Lucifer threw the quickest glance behind his own shoulder, to the edge of the cliff and, below, to the deer waiting. With them, Lucifer, and the masked hunters, the isolating feeling that he and Sam were the only humans here crawled uncomfortably under Dean’s skin. The metallic glint of the arrowheads found its way into Lucifer’s eyes- reaching him in the worst way possible.

Way too quickly for anyone to do anything, Lucifer extended his arm to grab Sam’s neck, wrung him around like a rag doll, and closed his rocklike arms around him. Sam’s toes barely touched the ground and his hands came up to try and pry away the choking forearms. Lucifer deliberately walked to the very edge of the cliff. He rested his chin on Sam’s head and looked at Dean and the hunters with raised eyebrows. Patient.

Just for him, it seemed, time slowed almost to a stop. The hunters were motionless, their still raised arrows needles that prickled Dean’s skin. Dean couldn’t breathe, couldn’t take his eyes off Sam’s. The world cale down to this: the thrumming line between the green eyes and the hazel eyes. Never had it been more important for these two brothers to communicate in a gaze.

The rise and fall of Sam’s chest calmed down. He stopped moving altogether, allowing his limbs to go limp. Dean saw the decision in his brother’s eyes just before he closed them; he saw it in the way Sam drank him in like he was going walk out of the world and close the door.

Dean had just enough time to fill his lungs for a shout. Sam had enough time to reach out beneath Lucifer’s loosened grasp to blind him – his eyeballs were soft and yielding for the rest of him – and to thrash wildly enough to give Lucifer the push that tipped them both over the edge.

Dean’s throat clogged up and his first cry was strangled as he scrambled to the brim of the cliff.

“Sam !”

He tripped on the slippery ground, got back up. _No, let me see my brother,_

“Sam !”

When he looked down, he could only see the frenzied semicircles of waves, the white foam washing over the chanting deer people. _I want my brother,_

“Sammy !”

_He’s too young,_

His screams blended in the loud staccato of the spell’s words rising up above the thundering storm.

_I didn’t say goodbye…_

The thoughts collided and yelled in pain in Dean’s mind. He cursed the tears stinging his eyes and blurring his sight because he had to keep looking, see if he could catch a glimpse of anything breaking the surface: the feet he taught to walk, the hands he held, the forehead he kissed… _Sam knows how to swim, he’ll come back up…_

His shouts turned to inarticulate whimpers, and the notes of the incantation died down also. But another sound struck just then, too slowly at first for anyone to locate its origin. It simmered and Dean noticed at the same time as the deer pointed at it: the place in the lake where Sam had disappeared was boiling, great bubbles bursting hotly, and steam rose in thick billows. Dean scooted away, his face burning even with the rain to cool it down, but continued to watch the whirlwinds of water evaporating. When it weakened enough for the wind to carry it away, Dean approached again.

The lake was gone. Its bed was empty and the burnt earth, raindrops sizzling when they hit it, seemed oddly scooped out. Dean, dumbfounded, squinted to see what was happening. The deer – so small from where he was – fretted like ants, and Dean saw them, on the edge of the woods: demons. He saw Abaddon, first, and then one by one he could make out their silhouettes; Ruby, Meg, Lilith... He struggled to see all the figures, smoke whirling around them, until, at last, they slunk back into the shadows of their forest as if they had never been there.

Dean wanted to call after them, make them return the water, the gate, the only hope to see Sam again. The deer scattered, as did the hunters behind him, leaving him with hushed “It’s over”s. On his hands and knees, Dean slowly pressed his face to the ground, and screamed in the soaked earth, gasping on its heady scent, and beat it with the heel of his hands. The blades of grass drank his tears like they drank the rain.

When he calmed down, he straightened up, sitting on his heels. He looked at the landscape ahead of him but couldn’t bring himself to see it. The wind picked up again and he was drenched; he shivered. He was so tired and weary, he thought he could have stayed here and wasted quietly away.

“Dean.”

He could sense her hovering behind him, as if she was on the verge of touching him. He heaved a sigh. He stood up and turned to her.

“You coming back ?” Jo said.

Under the smeared paint, her face was open with a sadness that was too empathetic to bear. Dean took her small, cold hand and let her lead him back to the castle.

That night, he cried in Cas’s embrace.

 

Winter reached into the wind with its cold fingers and everything was dead.

His brother dead.

His lover dead.

Grief woke up, yawning, stretching its phantom limbs in his chest; made itself known all over again. Mourning exhausted him and he spent almost all his time in his room; away from the nightmares hidden in the folds of his bed sheets, looking out the window at the grey sky and white landscape. He tried to keep his mind as blank as the snow but the memories kept gushing forward like river water at the start of spring. It was always like this: he recovered from the shock, first, and then he wanted to go back to the numbness of it because he couldn't bear trying to cram all the memories in the abyss of the person’s death. Couldn't bear resisting fooling himself into believing this patchwork person could sustain him. Dean couldn’t find the balance between forgetting and letting go. Sam was not dead, just sealed away forever. Cas still visited him, mute, haunting, dir antlers ever-growing, elusive when not menacing. Dean imagined he could almost touch his ghosts, sometimes.

It was not the same grief, but it hurt in all the same ways, and they tangled in his sleep – sometimes he kissed Sam, sometimes he cradled an infant Cas.

 

He started by making small talk with the servants, after a few months; realized he missed talking to people. Jo coaxed him outside when spring came, asked him once, twice if he wanted to go on a hunt, then dropped it. Dean didn’t go beyond the royal gardens. He didn’t think he could face meeting any deer people. He made flower crowns until he was told he shouldn’t be mugging the royal bushes of all their blossoms, but Jo joined him, and she wore the garlands and paraded for him, haughty at times and making faces at him at others. She won short-lived chuckles.

Sam grew distant in Dean’s dreams, but Cas was ever insistent, stubbornly refusing to fade away. Dean wished he could figure out what that meant. He wished getting better would mean he’d stop waking up crying.

Years passed; he didn’t leave the Harvelles, and John didn’t ask after him. That was fine by Dean.

 

When Dean heard the report of his father’s death in a hunt, he was numb to it. He didn’t know if it was because he’d grown detached from him or if he was too used to grief. He went to the stables to see Impala. He stroked her muzzle, apologizing for never taking her out anymore. This was his father’s horse given to him, yet he felt nothing, no sadness. He shed a tear, warm and prickly with summer sweat. Nostalgia, perhaps. He’d stopped trying to label his emotions. They all ended up getting sucked in the pit of emptiness in his stomach, anyway.

Nonetheless, he had to take over the crown, and he soon packed up and grudgingly left the Harvelles. He didn’t know if his recovery would bear going back to the place where it had all started.

The castle was much like he had left it, big and masculine in its magnificence. But the gardens, for no logical reason, they had grown unruly, brambles and thistles attacking the paved pathway to the castle, weeds between its cobblestones. The castle itself felt empty, suffering the comparison with the busy Harvelle citadel.

Dean’s heart thumped as he opened solemnly the grand doors to the throne room, then it jumped in his throat at once. There, above the massive gilded throne, was still pinned Castiel’s head. He didn’t know why he had expected the shock of the beloved face eaten away by maggots, didn’t know why the morbid curiosity to see if they were made the same underneath it all had nagged him. But the head was in pristine condition; more than that, the antlers had grown like vines suspended in the air, flowers having burgeoned from them and from Cas’s skin; even from under dir eyelids like colorful eyelashes.

It was in that moment, when Dean took down the trophy to put it away, that he made a decision, for which dream-Cas kissed him tearfully.

 

Under a few weeks, he settled his marriage with Jo to join the two kingdoms. The ceremony was sumptuous, and Jo’s dress was beautiful: silver leaves covering her shoulders, flowers delicately cut into the layered white fabric of the bodice, the muslin flow around her legs light as air. Dean was almost brought to tears.

The wedding night was filled with their giggling at the idea of people thinking what they might be up to in their room other than sitting on the bed playing cards.

Several months passed before Jo brought it up to him with questioning eyes and gentle hands. Dean gave in to the sweetness of her.  
Dean waited again until Jo delivered their heir, rosy and healthy all over. Only then, did he leave.

 

He donned commoner clothes, intending to make the trip by foot. He stayed as long a moment as he could saying goodbye to Impala, pressing his face against her crest to keep her familiar strong scent with him a little longer. He carefully packed Cas’s head in a big burlap bag, fingertips trembling when they touched the still tender skin, and fixed the antlers so they didn’t budge. He sneaked away, carrying the sack on his back like an inconspicuous prey bag.

The cumbersome and heavy baggage obliged him to take a break at least once an hour, but he had reached a village by nightfall. Sitting at the counter of the tavern where he would stay the night, he asked the bartender about the Chitaqua forest.

“Oh, that !” she exclaimed, rubbing a glass with the same dishcloth over and over. “Well, ‘round here, we ain’t really talking about it, much less going in it. Even back before the fire, there was folks going on about the monsters and magic air there was in those woods, y’know, like tales to frighten children, but the fire, oh, it proved them people right.”

“How come ?” Dean asked.

“Well, the Hunter King, he brought his men to burn the forest down, because there was a monster who killed people right here in the towns, yeah ? And the fire blazed for days because no one put it down and it was really bothering us because it was so huge we couldn’t do anything. We even considered writing to the King- he’d put this mess here ! It went on for three days, and when we wake up on the fourth ? Guess what, the fire was gone, and not only that ! The forest was as it always been.”

“Like there had- like there’d been no fire ?” Dean struggled.

“None at all !” she concluded on a high note, as if to say, Can you believe it !

Dean could believe it.

The tree line taunted him as he made the last segment of his journey towards it. It was the last days of spring and the sweet smell of the withered blossoms was already mellowed in heat. The shade of the trees was warm and welcoming, branches and roots beckoning, reminding him the way to take.

The Tree King stood noble and unchanged, though Dean had been expecting no less. It was basked in golden sunlight, birds chirruped talkatively amongst the greenest leaves, and wildflowers bloomed everywhere they could, little clumps of bright colors flapping softly. It was a beautiful day to die.

Dean laid his luggage cautiously on the ground and began to strip from his clothes until he was down to nothing but his freckles, standing out in the sun. A fragrant breeze made beads of sweat roll down his naked body. He crouched and deposited his crown, a circlet of silver leaves and gold flowers. Then he untied the bag, removing Cas’s head carefully; a few petals fell and stuck to his skin.

His legs carried him like a well-oiled machine to Cas’s nest. He curled himself in the alcove, grateful for the bed of moss that had grown, maneuvering the head in his lap, antlers partly outside because too big for the niche. Dean closed his eyes, breathing deeply. He felt the cheeks turn wooden under his fingers, felt sap drip from the neck stump on his shivering skin, felt the hair tickling his belly like grass. He was baked in sun but shook all the same as he heard the antlers thickening and snapping to the root over him and the wood all around him creaking towards the missing head. He muffled his groans when every inch of skin in contact with the head burst in sharp pain with thousands of cuts from which emerged flowers – white poppies, striped red with blood. Dean refrained himself from tearing at them because he knew they would keep coming, his flesh turned to soil for them. He felt arms of bark slither over his limbs to ensnare him and didn’t fight them; he couldn’t move anymore. His tightly closed eyes let hot tears escape. He whimpered Cas’s name over and over like a mantra, pleading dir to come for him at last. His entire body hurt so much it became numb, and Dean felt himself slip into unconsciousness with gasping relief.

 

After Dean’s disappearance, the Harvelle and Winchester kingdoms became one and the Harvelle castle was appointed as its capital. The Winchester castle fell apart over the decades and centuries to follow. Nature took back its rights and devoured the crumbling ruins, inviting the gardens inside. Important people were replaced by tiptoeing plants with flowers as pets, rich tapestries by cascading vines and ivy crawling between the stones, and luxurious carpets by moss and grass. Over time, the name Winchester was forgotten and the fallen palace became known as Mother Nature’s Castle.

-

In a lush forest dreamed up at the end of the word, an antlered figure helps a man stand up. Joining their souls and their hands, they walk to a third silhouette waiting for them at the edge of a blinding sun and, together, outlined in white and painted in gold, they cross the threshold of light.


End file.
